return to table of content

Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

air7
121 replies
1d5h

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable.

The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the average intelligence requirement for jobs increases over time (though never stated directly). This means that as time and technology progress, a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing. [o]

What's the proper social response to that, I don't know.

[o] If and when AGI comes along, that will be all of us.

karaterobot
21 replies
23h2m

Wait a minute. Higher skill jobs? For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon. If you lost your job because Amazon put your company out of business, you could get a worse, more humiliating job working at an Amazon warehouse, or as an Amazon driver. It was not higher skill jobs the market shifted to, it was Nomadland jobs. Now that Amazon is switching to robots, where are those people Amazon is putting out of work supposed to go?

ranger_danger
8 replies
22h46m

That's the point.

karaterobot
7 replies
22h39m

Not by my reading of the original comment. Seems like they're saying that layoffs result in higher skilled jobs.

And here's my basis for that conclusion:

The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set.

And what I'm saying is that there may not be new jobs, and if they are they may be lower skill jobs if history is any indication.

starttoaster
2 replies
19h57m

The robots replaced the frontline laborers, yes. But someone now needs to maintain, build, and engineer new robots. Hence they said the laborer's job was replaced with one that requires fewer people at a higher skill (and probably pay) level. Or at least that's what I picked out from their comment.

pixl97
1 replies
17h31m

Please note that while the robot is replacing local jobs, the people engineering, building, and maintaining robots could be ln the other side of the plant also. In a world that's seen a huge amount of consolidation we are likely to see further consolidation.

starttoaster
0 replies
46m

It is not uncommon to move across the United States for work. Across the planet might be a different story.

downrightmike
2 replies
21h11m

USA stem grads are too expensive, so companies are just opening body shops in asia/south america.

So stem education was largely just a grift to get everyone they could into college.

throwaway4220
1 replies
20h50m

Your first statement doesn’t really match your second statement

downrightmike
0 replies
20h42m

Get a stem(tm) education! It'll get you a job! Wait.. you cost too much now, so we're not going to hire you, instead we'll outsource.

ranger_danger
0 replies
22h15m

My understanding was that they're saying it's the act of replacing the worker with a robot that requires more skilled workers to maintain/design/manufacture/etc., not that it merely resulted in a layoff.

trimethylpurine
7 replies
22h0m

The fact that you can now warehouse with robots lowers the barrier of entry for warehousing, which creates new companies that will host competition against Amazon, offer contract labor for Amazon, and in both ways create jobs that are superior to the previously needed entry level pick and packer. The same laborer can now be promoted at a new company to a higher pay job that requires no greater skill set, simply because there are now more of those better jobs at more companies. We can't all be managers at Amazon. But we can all be managers at 100000 different warehouses that previously didn't exist. That's where they are supposed to go.

karaterobot
3 replies
20h56m

That seems wrong. Why would robot warehouses lead to more and better warehouse jobs for humans? Fewer humans would be necessary overall in the existing warehouses, and it's not obvious to me why a lot more warehouses would be created.

Did replacing manufacturing jobs with robot assemblers in—for example—the automotive sector, lead to more auto manufacturers and better jobs for auto workers? I don't believe it did. There may be more manufacturers now, and more jobs, but they aren't high skill or highly-paid jobs, and they aren't staffed by the people who were laid off originally (because they were mostly moved to other countries, where people can work more cheaply than the countries where the jobs were lost).

For capital intense upgrades like robots, why wouldn't the advantage go to a few big players, rather than a ton of small ones?

I also don't understand why the number of new skilled workers in this new world would somehow equal the number of warehouses workers laid off. What's the connection between those two seemingly unrelated phenomena? Why wouldn't it, for example, be a lot of laid off low-skill workers, and a just a few new, high-skilled workers?

Or for that matter, why the next generation of robots wouldn't just replace those higher-skilled warehouse jobs in a few years. And so on.

6510
1 replies
20h36m

Let me help you with that one.

Fewer jobs & lower pay > fewer orders > fewer warehouses.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
11h18m

Because warehouse workers are the primary customers? I think you're trying to be funny.

trimethylpurine
0 replies
11h57m

It's the biggest cost in the distribution chain.

That means there's room for competition.

You aren't going to trust moving 100 million in product strictly to robots for a long time. And that's just a small business. And there's a lot of them.

why wouldn't the advantage go to a few big players, rather than a ton of small ones?

Because it's still way way cheaper than labor. Maintenance means you're paying for one guy's medical benefits instead of 20 guys, for example. The labor is the cost that's difficult to overcome and gives the bigger players an advantage. When that's stripped away, it's possible to compete against the bigger guys.

Cheaper than existing labor costs, loans can overcome capital entrance, and you can afford to pay on them when there's a smaller operating cost, plus they have some fixed ROI. Existing need for more warehouses, combined, I don't see why we wouldn't see more warehouses. Of course we will.

Look at middle America. Almost every metropolitan in the country is building warehouses in and around their airports. Some indeed are Amazon's and other big suppliers, but the majority are not. They are small storage and shipping outfits. Don't forget who supplies Amazon!

Also, the push for more condensed housing means fewer people per household which means more duplicate junk per person as they won't share with another household, obviously.

Growth means warehousing. There's no way around it. Unless we will manufacture domestically, that demand isn't going anywhere.

oblio
2 replies
21h20m

That's assuming the warehousing robots are commodities, which they aren't and maybe they'll be in a few decades.

It also assumes the moat to warehousing isn't huge, which seems kind of silly for such huge capital investments.

trimethylpurine
1 replies
11h15m

The moat is definitely smaller when labor, your biggest cost, is smaller. You can finance a purchase that's much larger if you are able to make the monthly payment because you don't have high labor costs. Purchasing has an ROI, and labor doesn't.

What am I missing?

oblio
0 replies
3h6m

The fact that warehouses are huge and need a lot of supporting infrastructure?

AnthonyMouse
3 replies
19h13m

For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon.

It wasn't so much the jobs that shifted there as the customers, and the reason for that is that Amazon had better prices. Then people complained about the jobs they did offer because they're mechanistic and exhausting, so they automate them and then people complain about that. But that too should result in lower prices -- Amazon's retail operation doesn't make any money, it's all going to competition with Walmart, who is doing the same things to lower costs.

But lowering prices creates jobs. People pay less for a dress or a phone case and then spend the money on something else. New jobs are created doing the something else.

Where this becomes a problem is for the things where the prices don't come down, like real estate. You have extra money and now you want to buy a house, but zoning laws inhibit new housing from being built, so instead if people have any money the monthly payment you need goes up or the landlord increases your rent. Or you have to buy something from some monopolist who can raise prices to eat your disposable income. Then the money goes into some corporate holding company that just keeps growing their hoard and never spends it on products and services.

The problem isn't robots, it's certificate of need laws and high tuition.

alvah
1 replies
17h9m

I wish I could upvote this comment more than once.

wordpad25
0 replies
12h35m

I gotcha!

easyThrowaway
0 replies
7h26m

But lowering prices creates jobs. People pay less for a dress or a phone case and then spend the money on something else. New jobs are created doing the something else.

Isn't this the principle supposedly behind trickle down economics just by another name?

ben_w
21 replies
22h25m

The chain of logic is falsified by the Whitney cotton gin: it was a labour saving device, which saved enough labour to make cotton much more profitable, which led to the growth of the cotton plantations in southern USA, which led to increased slavery, and those slavers actively prevented their slaves from learning to read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-literacy_laws_in_the_Unit...

That said, I would also agree with the conclusion that "a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing", but for different reasons.

I expect the abilities of AI to expand over time.

IQ is a poor measure, but suitable as a shorthand especially for a comment like this.

Imagine a general purpose AI that runs as fast as a human on 100 watt hardware; first one will be an idiot. Let's say IQ 50: only 0.1% of humans are dumber than this, nobody was employing them anyway. Version 2, say IQ 85: now about 16% are beaten by the AI, this absolutely matters, they're unemployable forever through no fault of their own, give them a basic income of some kind. Version 3, IQ 100, now half the world can't get work. Version 4, IQ 115, now it's 84% who can't get work, etc.

Reality is a lot messier than that, so nobody needs to bother picking holes in the specific details such as "that's a lot of electricity" or "AI isn't a robot" or "comparative advantage": this is a comment, not a research paper.

AnthonyMouse
11 replies
19h3m

The assumption here is that an AI with IQ 100 could do anything a human with an IQ of 100 could do, only cheaper. But that's just averages. Really it would do half the things better and half worse, and then people have jobs doing the things that it does worse.

That would continue until it doesn't do anything worse, which may or may not ever happen, but if it did and we're all still alive then the result would be post-scarcity and nobody would need a job.

jmilkbal
7 replies
17h22m

The power structures will never allow it. The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now. We will simply end up with a a planetary ruling class that lives opulently while the other 99% live in abject poverty.

wordpad25
2 replies
12h40m

That's an impossible scenario in a democracy which is ruled by majority. Wealthy class have hugely outsized influence, sure, but it's not limitless.

Consider, for example, that every politician lives and dies by his constituents employment metrics.

If population is genuinely unhappy with arrangement they DO vote for change. If they are extremely unhappy - they vote for drastic change.

kelnos
1 replies
11h43m

I think your view of our democratic institutions is a bit too rosy. I'm pessimistic that they'd withstand the social upheaval that might occur with a smart-enough AGI. Even now it seems like many people prefer authoritarian rulers -- or at least they think they'd prefer that, as long as the ruler is a part of their political tribe. They'll be in for a painful surprise later, of course.

alfiedotwtf
0 replies
10h12m

And that’s not even factoring in the automation of highly targeted yet dynamic political content (not just ads but the consumed content itself) in order to charge/persuade the target to vote for the paying party

Ajedi32
2 replies
4h36m

The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now.

Not if everyone wants to maintain their current standard of living. Imagine working 50% less hours, but also having to live off 50% of your current total compensation. Some here could probably manage that, but most would probably prefer not to.

Now if you want a whole "society of leisure", you'd have to impose that same lifestyle choice across all of society by government fiat. Its easy to see why that hasn't happened.

JoeAltmaier
1 replies
4h31m

Not really a realistic view of the western economy. Or economics.

Things like 'compensation' are fluid, fairly arbitrary and largely unrelated to the industrial complex. It's whatever we decide it is, pretty much.

Automation is in full swing, has been for twenty years and is only accelerating. Ignore that at your peril. Everybody will continue to have toasters, computers, cars even when we've automated most of us out of an industrial/manufacturing job.

How do I know? Because that already happened. Instead of tens of thousands of people on assembly lines, we have tens of engineers and managers overseeing automation. If it hasn't happened in some cherry-picked example, it will very soon.

We have to plan something for the majority of us to do, some way to participate in the resulting economy, without just throwing up our hands and saying "It's too hard!"

So much to say on this subject, that doesn't fit in an HN text field. There's a long history of thought on this subject, and the comments here indicate most folks are still on the first page in their thinking.

Ajedi32
0 replies
4h15m

Perhaps you could link to some information on this "long history of thought on this subject" because to me everything you just wrote sounds like nonsense.

The idea that we can just double people's compensation and thereby double our total economic output (because compensation is "whatever we decide it is") is so wrong headed I don't even know where to begin. Maybe that's a misunderstanding of your position, but I don't know how else to interpret what you just said.

AnthonyMouse
0 replies
9h56m

"The power structures" want people to need to work so they have to work for them. Better to keep you occupied with the rat race than have you spending time advocating for political reform.

Which is why work expands to fill all available time. They want you to have a job, because what they don't want is what you might do if your time was your own. For some subset of "they" that represents the most malicious pricks.

The thing that happens if they win is that everybody still has a job even if they're not doing anything useful. Which in a lot of ways is what's happening already.

_carbyau_
2 replies
16h9m

On the one hand I like to have faith in humanity. OTOH...

Anytime someone in power has no need for someone - what have they done? Provided for them for the rest of their life? Or discarded them?

The results generally lie with emotional attachment or sentiment. Take care of your aging parents as they become productively useless - sure.

Take care of the abstract thousands of people who made [thing] but are out of work now? Somebody else's problem.

AnthonyMouse
1 replies
10h9m

The point is that they don't end up out of work.

We have more automation right now than at pretty much any other point in history, and the unemployment rate is not high.

datadrivenangel
0 replies
4h55m

The point is that the unemployed end up using violence.

So you need to create employment to keep them out of trouble.

zeroonetwothree
3 replies
19h53m

IQ is sort of useful to measure humans because we have roughly comparable skills. It’s not applicable to AI at all in terms of measuring job fitness.

If I need someone to move some furniture it might only need an IQ of 85 but that doesn’t mean AI is doing it any time soon.

mdekkers
2 replies
18h9m

If I need someone to move some furniture it might only need an IQ of 85 but that doesn’t mean AI is doing it any time soon.

The article and discussion are literally about machines moving stuff.

alvah
1 replies
17h11m

The article and discussion are literally about machines moving stuff.

In a warehouse, not up the stairs to somebody's apartment...

kelnos
0 replies
11h42m

Why not, though? Advancements in robotics happen all the time. If we end up with a decent AGI in 50 years, I expect the state of robotics to have advanced too, perhaps to the point where it could carry furniture up a stairway to an apartment.

082349872349872
2 replies
11h50m

a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing

a/ My bet is that some large fraction of people are currently doing jobs that are far less demanding ("robotic") than what they are capable of doing.

b/ Also, in my experience IQ has a far bigger impact on length of training time than it does on the on-the-job performance afterwards.

ben_w
1 replies
5h25m

My bet is that some large fraction of people are currently doing jobs that are far less demanding ("robotic") than what they are capable of doing

Agreed, hence the caveat of 100 watts when at human speed: Humans are not capable of competing against costs of 100W * $0.10/kWh = $0.01/hour even when the only expense that human has is the cheapest available calories.

082349872349872
0 replies
3h23m

Agreed. I also forgot:

c/ as far as I can tell, "jobs" have been steadily becoming less skilled over the centuries (because we expect people to switch more frequently between them?); can we accelerate that?

So might a way out be that people do regular 100 IQ people stuff (yoga instructors, community theatre, etc.) and automation does (almost) all the heavy lifting?

Bring on the Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy? If the Morlocks of the future are electronic, they won't want to eat us Eloi anyway? (burning a human for electricity is even more wasteful than giving it spin classes)

mFixman
1 replies
11h29m

You are saying "IQ" and "intelligence" to explain people's career prospects, but what you actually mean is "social class".

tristor
0 replies
56m

No, what they mean is IQ/intelligence, just as they stated. Social class is part of the story, more so in the past than it is now, but it's not the entire story. High intelligence is a way out of upbringing and circumstances at the margins, when you can capture opportunities to escape. Tech jobs are filled with people who didn't come from higher social classes, many who suffered inequities during their childhood even from their social peers, but persevered due to having drive and intelligence.

Their argument is exactly what they stated, no hidden meaning here about social class. Not everything is class warfare.

quaintdev
13 replies
23h7m

It's time we take on bigger and harder problems to solve. Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that. We need multiple such companies tackling bigger problems. Solving climate change, dealing with plastic are other bigger problems.

I beleive there's no shortage of jobs. What if we start cleaning earth or reverse effects of human civilization on earth to make it more sustainable. The amount of people needed for that job are huge but we can't pay them at all because how our economies are structured. We need tectonic shift in how the world works today. Machines are taking human jobs, good. Now humans are free to do the work which machines can't do.

wolverine876
7 replies
23h3m

Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that.

There's an organization called NASA working on it.

inglor_cz
6 replies
22h43m

Does NASA have any planetary colonization program?

They do plan the Artemis mission, but AFAIK that is about establishing a tiny scientific base on the Moon, probably with regular exchange of the crew. I don't think they proclaimed an ambition to settle massive amounts of people there.

For me "living on another planet" is only really SpaceX's goal. Build a semi-independent nation on Mars, with a million or more people necessary.

That is very different from a scientific base project.

zztop44
5 replies
19h58m

Proclaiming things is very easy.

inglor_cz
4 replies
10h54m

SpaceX aren't just proclaiming things. They are building a skyscraper-sized fully reusable rocket with completely new engines to get away from the Earth cheaply.

skissane
1 replies
8h41m

The first crewed mission to Mars is very likely going to be a join SpaceX-NASA mission... to set up a crewed research station. Basically the same thing as Artemis Base Camp, except further away.

Yes, SpaceX wants to ship millions of people to Mars, but realistically they are several decades away from even starting that. You want to get a small permanent settlement on Mars (like a crewed research station), and get some experience with operating it, before you start sending heaps of people. And probably the initial focus will be just on growing that crewed research station (from 20 people to 200 people to 2000 people). And only then will you have enough information to really plan making it significantly bigger. I doubt we'll get there until some time in the second half of this century.

In the medium term, I think the Moon is a more realistic target for the private sector. The total cost per a person-year of a crewed lunar base is a lot less than a crewed Martian base, so you can pay for a much bigger lunar settlement for the same budget. You can also sell lunar surface tourism to the ultra-rich, and hope that economies of scale will gradually drive the price down; your average billionaire can spare a couple of weeks for a trip to the Moon, not the almost 3 years a Mars round trip would take. How about Hollywood filming on-location on the Moon? Reality TV shows? Professional sports competitions? All a lot more feasible given the much lower travel time (about 3 days) and light distance (a bit over 1 light second). I doubt any of these would be massive revenue sources (at least at first), but they'll be economically feasible long before their Martian equivalents become so.

wolverine876
0 replies
1h1m

I don't think anyone can say what will 'very likely' happen, but NASA often hires many contractors and also does much work internally (e.g., at JPL) for a major project. Also, there may be other national space programs partnering in the mission.

jfyi
1 replies
2h35m

...and they are building it for NASA's Artemis program. SpaceX evaporates the moment the juicy billion dollar public contracts dry up.

Mars is still a pipe dream. You might as well give the credit to Edgar Rice Burroughs for as far as realizing it has come.

inglor_cz
0 replies
1h2m

"SpaceX evaporates the moment the juicy billion dollar public contracts dry up."

So, not in the foreseeable future, given the new Space Race with China.

Ofc the government is an important customer for any launch provider (not just SpaceX), given that a lot of current space activity is military in nature. That just comes with the territory.

Edgar Rice Borroughs died before the first man-made rocket reached the orbit. Writing about Mars isn't the same as building a ship that can reach it.

I am not a native speaker of English, so I am not sure how much deprecation does the term "pipe dream" contain. But I don't think that manned flight to Mars is wild and unattainable fantasy. I would say that it is on the same level as manned flight to the orbit by 1945 - not yet here, but technically and economically feasible in a decade or two.

robofanatic
4 replies
22h34m

Living on another planet is a hard problem but only one company is working on that.

There’s a lot of unknowns in that and ROI can take very very long time. Not many people can or are willing to take that risk. If that one company is successful then you’ll see that space flooded with new companies.

quaintdev
3 replies
22h21m

Our generation is highly advanced but we have become very short sighted. We have made a mess of our world because of it.

I remember a story about Oxford. When it was built they planted entire forest of Oak trees so that in 500 years when Oxford will need repairing they have ample amount of wood available. In that age people were capable of thinking 500 years ahead. And we with all our advancement can't even think beyond ROI. Living on other planet should not be seen as choice but something that is necessary.

robofanatic
2 replies
19h28m

The problem is resources and money are not unlimited.

pixl97
1 replies
17h21m

And that's why 1% of us must hold on to 50% of that money and resources.

wordpad25
0 replies
12h11m

All of that money is working as part of the economy, paying salaries and such. It's not at all obvious that it's less efficient in an economic sense (although obvious not ideal from social sense)

exitb
12 replies
1d5h

Jobs are a byproduct of capital owners needing labor to sell things and services with a profit margin, so they can buy the good stuff. I’d argue that once the capital owners possess the technology that brings the cost of labor near zero, they will have no need for an economy at all, not to mention other people - unless it’s something more akin to a zoo.

JumpCrisscross
7 replies
23h18m

once the capital owners possess the technology that brings the cost of labor near zero

Most Americans are capital owners. You’re describing a world in which most Americans live in a utopia.

dhosek
6 replies
23h10m

A quick google says that 53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not. There will be some fraction of that 47% who have their own businesses, but I’m guessing that these would be people at the bottom end of the business scale. Would it really be fair to call the guys driving a truck through the alleys collecting crap metal capital owners who would live in a utopia?

The same article that cites the 53% number also says that the top 10% of income earners own 70% of the stock market. That doesn’t really sound like a recipe for utopia.

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
21h42m

53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not

Does that include 401(k)s and pensions?

foolofat00k
0 replies
8h12m

Very probably, yes. I'd be shocked if more than 60% of Americans even have a 401k/pension, let alone one with any meaningful sum invested.

dhosek
0 replies
19h20m

Yes. 401(k)s but not pensions. The latter are defined benefit programs where participants are not responsible for making investment decisions.

jkhanlar
1 replies
11h38m

https://youtu.be/FID0BLkZXuY?t=2058s

34:24 "Markets are efficient because of active managers setting the prices of securities, firms like Citadel, firms like Fidel.....lity (Fidelity) [...] trying to drive the value of companies towards where we think they should be valued." - Kenneth Cordelle Griffin, Citadel Securities, November 2023

I thought Amazon was a public company, not private, and since supply and demand is dead and real price discovery is gone, that unless it becomes a private company it likely will not survive, unless there are enough retail investors to DRS directly register shares in their name so that DTCC (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation) and Cede & Co do not hold all the assets for retail in street name to then bankrupt and collect all the assets leaving retail investors holding worthless securities, but I don't see that Amazon is private? Maybe I missed something that happened and it's a private company now?

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
4h47m

thought Amazon was a public company, not private

Parks, libraries and military bases are publicly owned. Amazon is a private company whose shares are publicly traded.

since supply and demand is dead

This is wrong.

so that DTCC (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation) and Cede & Co do not hold all the assets for retail in street name to then bankrupt and collect all the assets

This is nonsense. (For starters, not how bankruptcy works.)

Maybe I missed something

Mankiw’s Principles of Economics is a well-regarded introductory text [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Economics_(Man...

int_19h
0 replies
9h22m

And for most Americans who own publicly traded stock, the income that is derived from it is supplemental, not primary.

You're not really a full-on capitalist unless you can stop working and still have sufficient income derived from economic rent collected from somebody else who is working to sustain you in perpetuity.

gnz11
2 replies
22h43m

they will have no need for an economy at all

Who is going to buy all of their crap then?

rcstank
0 replies
21h34m

They won’t be selling anything by that point.

jkhanlar
0 replies
11h31m

I noticed NVIDIA skyrocket from billions to trillions market cap, so wouldn't NVIDIA be able to help deploy some a.i. simulatedly autonomous homo borg genesis to engage in scripted automated consumer lives to replace traditional homosapiens/humans consumers and takeover what otherwise was economy and market for human people but now they are replaced by redefining human and people to be displaced by the automated scripted a.i. controlled ones? This is already happening, right? Or did I just give them idea to make this a reality? lol, wait, why am I getting raided by the FBI right now? What's going on? HALP!

acestus5
0 replies
1d4h

This reminds me of the Chinese white monkey jobs.

chucke1992
11 replies
22h8m

Neither computers nor cars, nor office nor photoshop decreased the amount of available jobs...

chillingeffect
5 replies
22h4m

But exactly as the person you replied to said, they increased the average intelligence needed to do the new jobs. That leaves so many marginal people unemployable. They could have maintained horses but working in cars is harder. I like this observation.

ben_w
3 replies
21h55m

I'm not convinced that animal husbandry is less skilled than working in cars. Different skill, and as I've never done it I can't be certain, but horses are wet and messy biology with brains that are terrified of anything they've never seen before. Production line work I did do as a summer holiday job during my A-levels aged 17 or 18, it wasn't skilled work but also that was HVAC production line not cars.

bombcar
1 replies
21h44m

The specialization has certainly taken off - people are much more specialized in their jobs now whereas “farmer” was really a jack-of-all-trades with passing capabilities in many different skill sets.

zztop44
0 replies
19h53m

Yes and it’s not at all obvious to me that being a jack-of-all-trades farmer (builder, mechanic, etc) requires less intelligence than learning Python.

oblio
0 replies
21h15m

There is a thing to say about "unnatural-ness". Handling horses up to a point had to be more intuitive and more approachable, we've been around horses and other mammals since forever. Around spreadsheets? 40 years, max.

ameister14
0 replies
22h1m

They actually resulted in a decrease in overall skills required. It takes a lot of skill to use a loom and make a napkin, the same is not needed for factory work yet you can make 100 napkins at the same time.

Similarly, we had the rise of the service industry in the US - manufacturing required a lot of skilled labor; retail and wait-staff do not require the same skill.

wvenable
2 replies
12h52m

As a software developer, I've personally eliminated many jobs. Software was eliminated entire classes of jobs. Almost all investment in technology by businesses is about cost reduction and the number one cost is labour.

I think we're past the point where technology is making new jobs -- all that low hanging fruit has been gone for decades now. Growth now is all about optimization.

kelnos
1 replies
11h30m

That's undeniably true, but not the point: obviously new technology eliminates entire classes of jobs (not much call for telephone switchboard operators these days), but ultimately if more jobs are created than are lost, we're fine.

I personally do wonder, though, if many of the new jobs that are created are worse jobs. For example, I have not yet taken any work in the "gig economy", but most of it seems pretty miserable, with shit wages.

wvenable
0 replies
1h2m

but ultimately if more jobs are created than are lost

For people who believe more jobs are created, it seems like they rely in chaos theory or something. They can't see how or where these new jobs will be created or how automation leads to it. We automated physical labour so we increased intellectual labour. Now are automating intellectual labour too so what's being increased now?

pixl97
1 replies
17h15m

You do realize that most governments run massive jobs programs to ensure this number of available jobs stays high, right? In the US we give massive tax breaks in exchange for hiring numbers.

Computers may have very well reduced job numbers but we're running a contrived system at this point.

BenFranklin100
0 replies
15h45m

Source?

snowwrestler
9 replies
22h5m

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable.

It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time.

In addition, the nations driving the most technological growth domestically have experienced the greatest job growth over that time. With the result that many of them, like the U.S. and UK, have had to develop robust immigration programs.

Even within a single nation, like China, there is temporal correlation between technological development and job creation. As China has leaned into tech over the past few decades, job creation accelerated there.

So by definition, the average intelligence requirement for jobs increases over time (though never stated directly). This means that as time and technology progress, a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing.

Again, the evidence shows the opposite correlation: technological development results in more people working, not less.

rdedev
4 replies
21h48m

The key point being it's created more jobs so far but we cannot extrapolate the same thing if AGI comes up tomorrow. Like let's say open ai comes up with a new LLM that is capable of replacing a human in let's say software development. What new jobs would it create?

All technological advancement so far has created new jobs because you need someone to actually work on it, like a chip factory or doing devops. As far as I can see an AI is general enough that you don't need much effort to specialize it and with how things are currently going, only a few players have the capability of building and deploying it.

wordpad25
1 replies
12h19m

Poor countries have with little physical or financial infrastructure have high unemployment. You'd think there would be more jobs because there is a lot more opportunity to grow, but no, it's the opposite, there few jobs and they are bad jobs. Because there is little opportunity to create actual VALUE, in economic sense.

Technology brings efficiency and brings jobs. Say entire tech sector, software developers and IT get fully automated - well, now all the VALUABLE services those companies provide are much much cheaper. All the savings are passed on to their customers (B2b and B2c) who will now spend those savings doing things they couldn't afford to before - and THOSE industries are where jobs will move to.

For a more simplistic example, imagine cost of electricity (or some raw materials) dropped 10x, would it lead to fewer jobs or more jobs? Of course more jobs, since you'll be able to do a lot more now.

rdedev
0 replies
5h43m

While I understand your point it seems to only focus on one side of things, a bit like trickle down economy.

Let's say the IT sector is completely automated. What would all those devs do? Now keep automating medicine, legal and everything else and ask what would those people do? What's remaining are probably manual labor jobs for which we don't need so many people.

thechao
1 replies
21h41m

I'm sorry, why would an AGI be interested in programming? My kids are AGI, and they're not interested. I think there's a real moral conundrum when we say "programmer AGI" because, I think, we're implicitly talking about terminating every non-programmer AGI, to meet our labor force whims. Replace "programmer" with intellectual task of your choice.

jrflowers
0 replies
19h34m

Your kids are artificial general intelligence?

echelon
2 replies
21h44m

It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time.

That isn't some immutable law of the universe. 200 years is a short sample size relative to geologic time.

Once we have robots doing the cooking, cleaning, heavy work, etc., what becomes of the Waffle House and Walmart worker? There will be a lower bound capability threshold, and automation will eventually exceed that.

I think a smart comparison would be to look at what job opportunities are available to the intellectually disadvantaged.

Then what happens when that lower bound inches higher?

pixl97
0 replies
17h24m

Ya, when people use this argument ask them "the population of humans always grows right?" Because up till recently that was the consensus unless something drastic or terrible happened. Then in the past few decades we see people having far fewer children then even replacement rate.

Upsetting the labor market is leading us into unpredictable territory, much like at the start of the 1900s and the automobile set off a string of events that lead to two massive world wide wars.

coderenegade
0 replies
14h56m

In principle, they could probably just buy their own robots and start their own businesses. Locality is its own quality for SMEs. Whether or not that happens in practice is anyone's guess.

simonsarris
0 replies
21h56m

It’s not debatable; we have over 200 years of technological development to look back on and the trend is clear: the total number of jobs has increased at least as fast as human population growth over that time.

200 years ago the town [severely mentally disabled person] could chop wood and carry water. What's he doing today?

There are ~9 million people on SSDI (disability) and ~5 million on SSI (considered completely unfit for work, the US version of basic income), and ~50 million retired. Retirement conceptually slowly became a thing around the late late 1800s. Many of these people are in one of these three categories because there is no job that would be a good fit for them, especially SSI, which most Americans don't even know about.

genedan
6 replies
23h3m

Technology can also reduce the skills needed for jobs. For example, you no longer need to have an entire city's streets memorized to be a taxi driver.

layer8
4 replies
23h0m

I don’t think there was ever a taxi driver shortage because city streets are too difficult to memorize.

genedan
2 replies
22h53m

Rideshare and delivery apps have enabled more people to do those jobs than before.

layer8
1 replies
22h46m

Because of less skills required? What are you basing this on?

bombcar
0 replies
21h48m

More like because of the non-necessity of supplying a livable wage.

inglor_cz
0 replies
22h42m

Prior to the advent of GPS, taxi drivers in many cities were tested on their orientation skills and had to memorize a lot of streets. I would be surprised if no one ever failed this part of the exam.

pjmlp
0 replies
22h57m

Until you get replaced by a robot taxi.

wolverine876
3 replies
23h4m

The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the average intelligence requirement for jobs increases over time (though never stated directly). This means that as time and technology progress, a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing.

You might look up what economics has to say; this issue is well-addressed there. Some fundamentals:

The comment above assumes a static marketplace - the same technology, needs, etc. - and one that addresses the entirety of economic demand, rather than a dynamic market where those things change and resources are scarce (thus when resources become available, they are applied to other unfilled needs).

For example, which skills are in demand changes but there is still growing demand: If you look at the jobs performed 100 years ago, you'll see that most of them are no long needed. Yet not only are most people employed today, we have ~3-4x as many people - most of the jobs disappeared, yet, 3-4x people have jobs.

And yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.

ameister14
2 replies
22h6m

yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.

The problem, of course, is that wages stagnated from '99 to 2014 and the job participation rate has been decreasing since 2000 while cost of living and general production increased; so no, in a dynamic market work does not necessarily come with higher pay. It actually wouldn't really make sense for all new work to come with higher pay; if you have changes in supply (which is what we are really talking about) that come with associated lower labor costs, the people that used to provide higher cost labor for the initial supply level will have to accept significantly reduced salaries in their industry.

That's what happened with the industrial revolution. Wages overall increased because people entered the workforce for the first time as skill requirements went down, but the average wage of previously employed people went way down as artisan and highly skilled labor was outcompeted by factory work.

wordpad25
0 replies
12h16m

wages stagnated, not total compensation which continued to grow employee preferred form of compensation has just shifted towards other benefits

bamboozled
0 replies
21h49m

while cost of living and general production increased

This is a major problem! Why ? Corporations chasing profits without enough competition ?

PKop
3 replies
21h25m

Eugenics

oblio
1 replies
21h17m

Sure, who's volunteering to be the first one? For sure I won't volunteer for it :-)

Nesco
0 replies
20h3m

If it comes through rna/dna editing it will be a good evolution

082349872349872
0 replies
11h55m

How do you intend to be any more successful than the last several thousand years of attempts at eugenics?

bamboozled
2 replies
21h51m

But how do you know what that future looks like? For example, What if we use AGI and make ourselves smarter and more capable as Kurzweil has argued ?

You can’t imagine what that will look like so why worry about jobs ?

starbugs
0 replies
20h56m

You can’t imagine what that will look like so why worry about jobs?

I'd rather worry about what that would look like given the current trends in tech and society.

pixl97
0 replies
17h19m

What if we use AGI and make ourselves smarter

I mean a large portion of people on the 'information highway' seem to use it to make themselves dumber.

logicchains
1 replies
22h58m

The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set

No they don't. If AI reached the point where it was capable and willing to do all white collar work, there'd be no more need for humans to do that kind of intellectual work. What would still be needed is service jobs that rely on the "human touch", and trades that AI lacked the dexterity to do. We're already seeing that now, with AI posing a greater threat to programmers' jobs than to plumbers or electricians' jobs.

yoyohello13
0 replies
22h54m

Oh good, now instead of creating things, everyone can have a fulfilling career at Starbucks.

hanniabu
1 replies
22h19m

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result.

That was true in the past, but as technology gets better that won't be the case. Yes new jobs will be created, but there'll be fewer and fewer.

Technology will allow for more generalized approaches that can be quickly adapted to new solutions. So new jobs will also be replaced quicker and quicker.

hackerlight
0 replies
20h14m

Comparative advantage will keep people employed for a while: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/plentiful-high-paying-jobs-in-...

There's a recent NBER paper that predicts wages will increase in the beginning of the AI revolution, even as AI displaces some jobs. Eventually there will be mass unemployment, but only when AI dominates humans (cost & capability) at almost everything.

tossandthrow
0 replies
22h50m

the job displacement could be in the care sector. that is what usually happened.

I don't think being a caregiver necessarily is a more complex job than the ones being displaced.

kelnos
0 replies
11h20m

The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

A taxi driver of 20 years ago had to memorize roads and routes, and become familiar with traffic patterns at different times of the day. (Many taxi drivers sucked for various reasons, but that's neither here nor there.) Today, anyone can be an adequate taxi driver, without really any knowledge of the areas they work in. Slap a smartphone on your dashboard and you're good to go. That's a lower skill job.

You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain

Sure, and that's part of the problem. You lay off those 100 manual workers and hire 5 workers to maintain the machinery. It's not at all clear that those 100 manual workers are going to then find higher-skill jobs, especially if they need training to get them.

What's the proper social response to [hypothetical AGI displacing more and more jobs], I don't know.

Easy: universal basic income, plus free higher education and vocational training programs for people who do want to work in a field that still needs humans in the loop. We need to drop this inhumane view that people who can't (or even simply don't want to) work somehow don't at least deserve a basic standard of living. And I think we'll find that if we remove financial, housing, and food insecurity, more people will actually want to find meaningful ways to participate in society. Some people won't, and maybe that's a shame, but for the sake of all of us, they should still be housed and fed, comfortably enough.

hackerlight
0 replies
18h17m

When intelligence becomes truly abundant and cheap, then human intelligence won't be valued by the market. You only get paid well because your intelligence is scarce, but that won't be the case in a future with ASI.

It's hard to predict what will be valued, maybe personality traits that lend themselves to jobs like social media influencer, politician or actor, because people may still value real humans in these jobs.

fragmede
0 replies
19h27m

Just like the Turing test turned out to be the wrong problem, AGI is the wrong goal. As long as AI can stoichastic parrot its way to success, who cares if it's AGI? My washing machine broke and I want my robot to fix it. it doesn't need AGI to diagnose and fix the problem, it just needs to have seen that in the training data.

The real shift comes when the robots are dexterous enough to fix each other. that's when no new jobs will be created to fix them because they can do it themselves.

crooked-v
0 replies
16h1m

What's the proper social response to that, I don't know.

Universal basic income of some kind.

BenFranklin100
0 replies
15h47m

I don’t agree with this take. A more accurate and precise way to describe the effects of automation is that it creates more human-centered jobs, some of which may require higher IQ but many that do not. Your average massage therapist does not have a higher IQ than your average Amazon line factory worker, for instance.

shrubble
40 replies
20h50m

This is self-reported: remember the 1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores?

Amazon told us it was all "sensors" because it fit their company narrative to do so.

I am not saying that Amazon doesn't have 750k robots and hasn't laid off 100k people... but they usually have some seasonality, plus, the quoted number is from 2021, the height of at-home shopping.

"The world's second-largest private employer employs 1.5 million people. While that's a lot, it's a decrease of over 100,000 employees from the 1.6 million workers it had in 2021"

I think a bit of skepticism is in order, is all.

jedberg
18 replies
20h29m

The 1000 Indians story was completely incorrect though. They has 1000 people in India tagging the videos after the fact for improvements to the machine learning algorithms. They weren't watching in real time.

jedberg
7 replies
18h4m

That article in particular was the one that was debunked. It was based on a false rumor.

paxys
2 replies
18h3m

Debunked where? The only response is from Amazon (in the same article), who are disputing the number but still admitting that the team did intervene when needed.

Dylan16807
0 replies
17h3m

And they did not give their own number, so even the dispute is very weak.

r00fus
1 replies
14h6m

Can you please produce any evidence that it was debunked? I can't find anything.

nyc_data_geek
1 replies
2h44m

Please provide evidence of your claim.

aimazon
4 replies
12h35m

For what it’s worth, I purchased from one of these Amazon stores every day for over a year. After leaving the store, it would typically take 2+ hours before my purchases were registered in the Amazon app. I agree that there probably was a large degree of automation but based on how the store worked, there didn’t need to be an army of “real time” reviewers for humans to be involved in each individual purchase… it’s totally plausible based on what I experienced that Amazon did have an army of people involved in the standard purchase path.

jkhanlar
2 replies
11h23m

I think it was from a video I watched a day or two ago, describing how with those uber and lyft and other order delivery services that consumers apparently are placing those orders wtih the services, picking up the items themselves and walking out, and then when the actual delivery person arrives, order is gone, reported as missing, the consumer also reports similarly, even though they picked up the orders themselves, that this is apparently happening more widespread commonly that still is vulnerable with business infrastructures to not prevent the exploit from taking place, I am curious how this may affect industry standards with regards to this concept because I never witnessed it but I wouldn't be surprised if it is not even that widely realized about the issue yet thereby enabling more theft and loss and damages and whatnot.

cyanydeez
0 replies
5h22m

Wonder if you could some how arbitrage your own food delivery...

Clent
0 replies
1h45m

How many times can one's order be 'stolen' like this before a pattern emerges and the account is banned? This is also fraud and because it requires using the internet, it's going to lead to felony charges.

mFixman
0 replies
11h31m

Same here.

My theory is that purchase tracking is done automatically via AI, while humans are on the loop to check the feed of people taking each item and verifying that the amounts are correct before charging.

It makes sense. Even if your entire AI system is 99.9% accurate, you want a human to detect and remove that one-in-a-thousand mistake.

waltbosz
1 replies
17h39m

Having not read the original story, this makes more sense.

"1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores" ...

Conjured up picture in my head of an Indian man inside an Amazon Go store sitting behind a registerless counter. What his purpose would be, I don't know.

WWLink
0 replies
12h12m

Funny story. The amazon go stores do have a register at the counter now.

But as far as I can tell, they rotate positions. There's never really anyone standing at that counter. If you walk up to the counter someone will come from the sandwich counter or restocking the shelves or whatever.

smnrchrds
1 replies
18h11m

I have a question: was the customer billed based on whatever the machine learning algorithm determined, or based on what humans decided after the fact? In other words, was the humans' job to just provide training data for future versions of the machine learning algorithm, or to manually fix the algorithm's errors and prevent over-billing?

entangledqubit
0 replies
15h55m

IIRC, they could correct your bill after the fact.

I used to joke with others that shoplifted items should be retroactively free - as long as you self report after the fact. (Extra useful training data...)

jairuhme
11 replies
19h45m

remember the 1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores?

Amazon told us it was all "sensors" because it fit their company narrative to do so.

I think you, like many others, fell into the trap of just looking at the headline. The 1k people were labeling training data, not watching you shop like a puppet master..

Kerbonut
7 replies
19h24m

Per the articles I read, they did more than label training data. They also did other things to facilitate the checkout process. They didn't get into what those things were however.

"Associates may also validate a small minority of shopping visits where our computer vision technology cannot determine with complete confidence an individual's purchases," the spokesperson said.
ehsankia
4 replies
18h43m

The whole discussion around that headline has always been so confusing. It's honestly unclear. What I'd like to know is, what % of actual costumer checkouts required a human being vs what % was 100% automated.

Some of the headlines and negative discussions make it sound like 100% of the checkouts required human approval. If that is true, then that's clearly terrible. If on the other hand it was anywhere below 5-10%, then I think that's a fair target for training the model in more difficult edge cases.

Something like Waymo also has humans constantly monitoring and helping, but I don't see much discussion about that being "controlled by humans".

tialaramex
2 replies
17h46m

Something like Waymo also has humans constantly monitoring and helping, but I don't see much discussion about that being "controlled by humans".

Constantly doesn't really make sense, riders can call for support and get a near instant response, but it's pretty obvious from some of the mistakes that humans aren't watching every ride in real time. There's video from inside a Waymo which is stuck in a lot repeatedly looping, discovering the exit it wants to use is blocked and then just driving to another exit before deciding hey, perhaps the exit I want to use is open (nope, it isn't) and returning again, and again, and again for example.

All the humans involved can see what's wrong here, but the Waymo driver software doesn't get it and so I think eventually a human (Waymo employee) has to drive the car out.

And yeah, there's definitely in San Francisco for example some people who believe it's all a Mechanical Turk again, even though that doesn't make any sense. In their heads, driving is another of those "uniquely human" abilities and so the only way to have AI cars would be fully general AI, and the real explanation has to be off-shore remote driving.

seanmcdirmid
1 replies
16h19m

Would it even be feasible to provide a taxi service with remote human drivers? I get the remote driver occasionally dealing with slow movement, but I think full time driving at speed would be impossible due to latency issues. It’s not a remote piloted drone that is in the air and so has much less of a chance of hitting something by accident.

Otherwise you think someone would have tried offering taxis driven by people in India or the Philippines already.

tialaramex
0 replies
6h34m

I believe there's a startup saying they'll deliver cars to you, so, cars with no people inside them driven remotely, once there's a human inside the human is driving. I don't recall the name.

Waymo itself is clear that it has no remote driving capability whatsoever. The Waymo driver is in your vehicle, so any technical issue (e.g. phone network drops out, satellite fails, whatever) won't affect the vehicle's self-driving. It may give up and pull over and let you out, but since it's local any situation where the driver is disabled would be similar impact to a human driver - if a block of concrete drops off an overbridge and smashes the Waymo driver, that could easily happen to your Uber driver the same.

Hence their choice to employ humans to attend in person and drive a Waymo which gets into trouble. In fact the humans sometimes have had to "chase" a Waymo car that, unless it has been specifically told to stop, assumes it should try to complete the journey once it can figure out how. Waymo's remote support can reach into the driver's model and tweak it e.g. to label a stray traffic cone as just trash, not actually off limits - but they aren't driving the car.

fragmede
1 replies
18h46m

"may also" still doesn't suggest that the remote observers were doing all the work and the computer vision systems didn't work and it was all a farce though. spot checking that the system works isn't the same thing as doing the job of the whole system

paxys
0 replies
17h57m

No one is suggesting that. The question is how automated was the system? According to the article 70% of all transactions were manually checked out because the algorithm didn't have enough confidence in its prediction. Amazon has disputed the number, but not the fact that the manual intervention was happening.

lnxg33k1
1 replies
8h7m

If they were labeling data the stores would still be open

filoleg
0 replies
1h32m

All the Amazon Go stores that have been open near me for the past few years are still open. Went to one last Friday, in fact.

WheatMillington
0 replies
15h7m

People keep saying this despite it being not true.

actuallyalys
4 replies
19h58m

the height of at-home shopping

I wondered that, too, but I did see that Amazon revenue has continued to grow since 2021. Of course, it’s possible AWS and other divisions are compensating for a decline in physical goods sold. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to find revenue numbers for specific divisions.

hattmall
3 replies
14h58m

That's from inflation. Look at CVS revenue growth and that's with a declining customer volume. Fewer customers buying fewer items, but fairly massive revenue growth.

Animats
2 replies
12h30m

Because of massive price increases due to a monopoly.

notyourwork
1 replies
10h22m

Can you share more on this? What monopoly?

Animats
0 replies
1h4m

CVS/Walgreens

varenc
1 replies
18h48m

Agreed. These numbers are being cherry-picked. From Amazon quarterly filings[0][1], here's their employees count:

  - Q3 2019: 750,000 employees
  - Q4 2019: 798,000 employees
  - Q1 2020: 840,400 employees
  - Q2 2020: 876,800 employees
  - Q3 2020: 1,125,300 employees
  - Q4 2020: 1,298,000 employees
  - Q1 2021: 1,271,000 employees
  - Q2 2021: 1,335,000 employees
  - Q3 2021: 1,468,000 employees
  - Q4 2021: 1,608,000 employees
  - Q1 2022: 1,622,000 employees
  - Q2 2022: 1,523,000 employees
  - Q3 2022: 1,544,000 employees
  - Q4 2022: 1,541,000 employees
  - Q1 2023: 1,465,000 employees
  - Q2 2023: 1,461,000 employees
  - Q3 2023: 1,500,000 employees
  - Q4 2023: 1,525,000 employees
The 1.6M count was a clear seasonal/stay-at-home blip.

[0] https://ir.aboutamazon.com/quarterly-results/default.aspx [1] https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/...

shrubble
0 replies
13h45m

Thank you for taking the time to break this out.

godsfshrmn
0 replies
20h20m

Very true. Could be counting 50k IR sensors that count how many items pass on a belt. (Plus maybe a PIR motion sensor in the bathroom )

bonestamp2
0 replies
18h56m

They've also laid off a lot of office workers, who were not replaced with robots... so we can't correlate the robot number and all of the changes in head count.

techdmn
28 replies
1d6h

About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was in charge of it was spending about 20 hours per week wrangling Excel spreadsheets to figure out what materials they needed. It was all based on data we had: inventory, orders, etc. A few weeks later, and with a fair amount of her help, I'd automated the whole thing. She was happy, it was her least favorite part of her job and she desperately needed time for other things. I was happy, I was showing that I was worth what they were paying me! (Salaried at the equivalent of $12.50 per hour.) BUT: That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job.

Automation is definitely having an impact on labor demand, with software driving out some jobs much the way cars and trucks drove horses out of our economy. I think it points to an increasing bifurcation, with jobs being high skill / high pay or low skill / low pay, without much in the middle.

Of course here in the U.S. this is also being driven by our monetary policy, our tax policy, our trade policy, our labor policy, I could go on. I'm in favor of UBI, but that seems about as likely as the use of any of those levers to reduce income inequality and spread the wealth our society generates in a way that supports most of those contributing to it.

wolverine876
14 replies
23h2m

That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job.

Or it allowed the employee to shift to more valuable, interesting work rather than menial tasks that could easily be done by a computer.

0xedd
9 replies
22h43m

But, some already operate at their peak. Then, you automate that and they can only shift to unemployment. The conversation shouldn't be about replacing the most skilled workers. The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation. These people have families. These people will suffer.

MichaelZuo
5 replies
22h19m

Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis?

Some will have better prospects and others will have worse. Since roughly half the population must have below median average prospects by definition.

starbugs
4 replies
21h29m

Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis?

No, but too much inequality is not sustainable. Since in a democracy everyone has an equal vote, there will be a force that balances things out over time one way or another.

RGamma
2 replies
20h54m

Democracy won't survive the tech trillionaires. At that point you can buy the executive.

mschuster91
1 replies
20h32m

We already are at the point where the ultra rich just buy politicians. Hell, we were ever since oil production was mainstreamed and the oil tycoons were able to tell the US to go to wars for oil.

golergka
0 replies
18h32m

Are your sure these were the oil tycoons and not voters who remembered 70s gas issues?

MichaelZuo
0 replies
19h8m

How does this relate to the parent?

Plus the point seems confused, far from every adult impacted by technology has a vote.

wolverine876
2 replies
11h45m

The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation.

There are many tropes to unpack, including that IQ is somehow fixed and people's fate, and that even the "average" person "can't learn something". Also, it of course glorifies and cements the power of the wealthy who think they are smart and very special and deserving of everything.

Also, history has shown that people overwhelmingly that people can learn higher skilled jobs en masse. Just look at universal literacy - did anyone say, 'the average person can't learn to read'.

The US has long believed that anyone can achieve and succeed with hard work. That's been my experience, but that the limit is almost always in opportunity.

DonsDiscountGas
1 replies
5h55m

That's a good point but things do change. Malthus was correct about humanities past but won't about the future (from his point in time).

Even aside from that, Learning takes time for everyone. At a certain point we're automating new tasks faster than humans can learn them.

Scaling works against humans too. Say it takes 1 year to train a human in something, and 1 year for a robot/AI. well it might take 1 year for the first AI, but copying software is easy. Training the next person takes another year. Even if it's parallelized and you save some time, the cost of training the marginal additional person is was larger.

wolverine876
0 replies
51m

A lot of that subconciously assumes the doomsday outcome - machines and automation will sweep people aside, and then the reasoning becomes circular.

At a certain point we're automating new tasks faster than humans can learn them.

That assumes the pace of automation is increasing, but similar concerns have been around for a long time, going back to the industrial revolution. Read Dickens or HG Wells (though a specific cite doesn't come to mind), or look at the 1927 silent film, Metropolis.

But right now businesses can't find enough employees.

Say it takes 1 year to train a human in something, and 1 year for a robot/AI. well it might take 1 year for the first AI, but copying software is easy. Training the next person takes another year. Even if it's parallelized and you save some time, the cost of training the marginal additional person is was larger.

That's how automation works. Then the people go on to the higher skilled jobs that the machines can't do, including designing, manufacturing, operating, and servicing the machines. Cars made the entire horse industry redundant; calculators and computers put lots of human calculators out of work.

Yet today, with a much larger population, employers can't find enough workers.

If things like that didn't happen, then productivity wouldn't increase and we would be able to afford more shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc.

Engineering-MD
1 replies
22h52m

I would disagree with the inference that menial tasks are automated and interesting work isn’t. I can clearly see a future where the pleasure is automated away leaving the stressful uncomfortable tasks to the human.

wvenable
0 replies
12h47m

AI is making art, books, poetry, music, software, and movies but I'm still here folding my own laundry.

Dylan16807
1 replies
12h15m

Not "or", "and". Without the automation they would have needed to hire another person.

wolverine876
0 replies
11h42m

That is not a given at all. Automation merely changes the ROI, which might result in more people being hired.

capybara_2020
3 replies
1d5h

Assuming the world is moving towards more automation and high skilled(not sure this is the right term. But places where you need to be more adaptable and think more) jobs. Also assuming for a moment todays adults are the transitionary generation.

How do we prepare the next generation for what is to come? It feels like schools are still stuck in the industrial age. How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting. Our parents could not predict what the world would look like today, neither can we. How do we educate the next generation on the foundational skills rather than specific skills which they can learn on their own depending on what the situation calls for?

This is an idea I am thinking about, so I would love to hear other opinions and thoughts.

Loughla
2 replies
1d5h

How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting.

This is literally what they're trying to do. People complain about the way things like math (concepts instead of rote memorization of facts) and spelling (stems and etymology instead of rote memorization) are taught. People complain that kids aren't learning cursive and other things like that.

But schools are trying to teach critical thinking and how to reason your way through problems, rather than blanket "facts".

doktor_oh_boli
1 replies
22h53m

I, personally think teaching kids critical thinking is great. Here in Eastern Europe they are only taught useless facts and not to think too much on their own, remnant of the past I guess...

pixl97
0 replies
17h7m

Eh you require a lot of factual knowledge to know how to think. I mean humanity has been pretty smart for the last 10k years or so, but without understanding of scientific laws and a massive amount of world knowledge breakthroughs were very slow compared to the last 300 or so years. We need these facts + philosophy + critical thinking, but it seems like no one knows how to teach this.

zmmmmm
1 replies
20h30m

That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job.

It's effectively a form of the broken window fallacy [0]. You don't actually have a closed system when you say a "job was removed". The company one way or another got more efficient - more widgets were manufactured per $ spent. It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something. By the time you add all the net effects back to regain a "closed system", economic theory says you actually have more jobs.

But the key here really is that this doesn't account for temporal effects, and especially when there is rapid disruptive change, you can absolutely have a huge dislocation and mismatch of labor supply / demand in the economy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

wvenable
0 replies
12h41m

It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something.

So a company used technology to automate someone out of a job but some downstream company isn't also going to do that with their new money?

The reason technology lead to more jobs is because it created exponential growth. The lesson of the last 200 years is that we can grow indefinitely. But that is already falling apart. The growth that is happening now is optimization. And it's happening at every level of society and it's not good for workers.

simonw
1 replies
23h20m

I have been contributing to open source software for more than 20 years. My contributions have always been to help save other developers time.

How does the impact from that on jobs differ from the impact had by AI tools like LLMs or robotic automation?

It certainly /feels/ different, but I'm having a little bit of trouble explaining why.

mickael-kerjean
0 replies
18h59m

With better oss tools, we've been able to achieve more with less people but for a long time there was more demand for skilled developer than what is available in the pool, hence the decent salaries coming from the market squeezing that pool. If robot takes over and the pool of available labor expand instead of shrink, the effect is the exact opposite, pressure on salaries from the remaining participants, worse conditions, ...

pydry
1 replies
1d6h

There's plenty of stuff in the middle it's just been moved overseas and the output is sent back to the US on a shipping container.

Chinese and Mexican factory workers != robots. It sounds obvious but the establishment, media, and economists do like to blur the distinction.

K0balt
0 replies
1d5h

This sounds a lot like one of the last projects I worked On, where some significant operations were to be assigned to “AI” which was meant to mean Artificial intelligence for marketing slicks but everyone knew it would be “Actually, Indians” for the foreseeable future.

exe34
0 replies
1d5h

I enjoy automating the boring parts of my job - plus if I don't, somebody else will. At least now I can just go on to automate the next thing.

Tyr42
0 replies
22h30m

By that logic every backhoe constructed removes hundreds of jobs of men with shovels.

But we instead build.mpre and bigger things using our tools.

082349872349872
0 replies
1d6h

drove horses out of our economy

A graph of the process is in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604784

(it also includes a bifurcation: between draft and sport/companion horses)

aczerepinski
28 replies
1d6h

I wish I could believe that all this automation would lead to more leisure time for all of humanity, but it certainly won’t happen on its own out of generosity from the robot owners.

VHRanger
22 replies
1d5h

We've been saying that for a long time. [Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks by now](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439)

The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much.

There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now!

But you'd need to have a smaller appartment, an older car, and eat more lentils.

While people say they want to work less, their [revealed preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference) is that they value buying stuff above having more leisure.

seper8
7 replies
1d5h

How detached from reality are you that you think people can make ends meet while working 15 hours a week?

Nimitz14
6 replies
23h23m

Some people do do that. Try stepping outside of your bubble.

ameister14
2 replies
21h58m

The average hourly wage in the United States is $30, so 15 hours a week is $450 pre-tax. Live on that with a family.

rfwhXQ5H
1 replies
21h15m

If you don't think that there aren't people doing that already in this country, get out of your bubble. How much do you think farmers are making?

maxsilver
0 replies
20h9m

Farmers (i.e., Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers) make a lot more than $450 a week. Average salary for these folks is $70k/yr.

A farm hand only makes like $15/hr on average, which puts it on par with a job at McDonalds or such.

selimthegrim
1 replies
18h3m

I concur. They're not looking in the right places. Musicians and artists would know about these sorts of hustles, but not your typical HN bubble dweller.

thomastjeffery
0 replies
1h42m

I know at least a dozen artists, and not one of them has found a side hustle that lucrative.

Instead, they get a Master's degree, and use it teach at 2 universities, and work a third job part time so they can afford rent.

dehrmann
0 replies
17h17m

There's a youtuber I've seen who I think is mostly legit who spent not much money on land in the middle of nowhere and built himself a one-room cabin and an outhouse on it. He's up-front that he isn't actually living off the grid or even in the cabin full-time, but his point is that if you live a very modest life and are handy, you can live on just a side hustle. Like you said, you're unlikely to meet people like this in the (sub) urban tech bubble.

nabla9
2 replies
1d5h

All what you say is true, if the wage share stays constant.

The "working poor" phenomenon where you can't pay for necessities like rent, healthcare etc. while working full time is the result of declining wage share.

Wage share has steadily declined in OECD countries since early 1970s. In the US since 1960s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 Wages make smaller and smaller portion of national income while capital share increases.

VHRanger
1 replies
20h29m

FWIW, the wage share declining is a result of many other factors. See here:

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-th...

Health insurance and other benefits, household composition have hurt wage share. Not that it didn't decline in real terms for the lower skilled workers, just less than the naive chart you put.

Here is good reading on the topic (maybe my favorite paper of the last decade):

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25588

int_19h
0 replies
9h13m

Your first link points out that income inequality is still growing, however. Which unambiguously means that those at the top are increasingly taking larger and larger slice of the pie.

Adverblessly
2 replies
22h16m

There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now!

Not without a 90% pay cut (i.e. as opposed to the ~60% pay cut you'd expect for working 40% of the hours), I've checked.

actuallyalys
1 replies
20h54m

Agreed. I think this is clearest when you look at benefits, e.g., the many American companies that only offer health insurance benefits to their full-time workers, but you see it in terms of pay, too. Most middle and high-paying jobs are exclusively full-time (and some expect 50, 60, or even more hours a week).

082349872349872
0 replies
11h46m

I live in a country where health insurance is individual, not employment based, so maybe that's part of why we offer 80% (most common) but also 60 and 40% positions?

paxys
1 replies
21h5m

There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now!

What 15 hour/week job pays enough to afford rent, food, medicine?

timClicks
0 replies
20h43m

That was the prediction at the start of the 20th century as thinkers considered the consequences of increased automation and therefore productivity.

xemra
0 replies
1d5h

Or maybe it's the security net that comes with it.

thomastjeffery
0 replies
1h49m

I work full time, make triple the minimum wage, and can barely afford to live in a 256 square foot micro studio apartment.

You're dreams are not my reality.

mschuster91
0 replies
20h30m

The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much.

Or simply they want to live. The amount of money we gotta spend on rent is insane.

maxsilver
0 replies
20h18m

people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much.

We don't actually know that. Most people don't have the option.

For all but a select few industries, there is no such thing as "work a part time job, and trade the rest for extra leisure" since almost no part-time job can sustainably cover cost of living. (Heck, most full time jobs don't really cover basic cost of living today).

There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. But you'd need to have a smaller apartment, an older car, and eat more lentils.

The average wage in Michigan is currently $21/hr. ($36k/yr after federal, city, and state taxes). The average basic 1-bed apartment here is about $1300/month or $15k/yr. Minimum income requirement to qualify for an apartment is usually 2.5x to 3x times monthly rent.

Math that out and you can quickly see that the vast majority of people simply aren't going to ever afford basic housing on 15hours a week. Or even 30hours a week.

--

And on the flip side, when it was actually possible to pull this trick off, more people used to use it. In the 60s and 70s, when you could actually live off a part time 20hr a week job, people routinely did so (and then used their free time to do things like enroll in college and pay for it on the side).

You don't see that anymore, because wages have fallen so drastically, and costs risen so drastically. It simply doesn't math out for the vast majority of folks.

fragmede
0 replies
17h48m

There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now!

Try talking to recruiters and tell them you want to work 2 days a week as a software developer and see how far you get.

dpflan
0 replies
1d5h

What if you bring the ideas of measuring productivity and wage growth of employees? How have productivity, wage growth, and corporate profit changed over the decades since Keynes? What was that 15 hour work week, how "productive" and paying is it supposed to be?

ed_balls
1 replies
1d5h

It would in places where robot owners care about. To avoid social unrest they will be forced to pay for UBI.

The two remaining problems would be:

- purpose and identity.

- places like Bangladesh where industries like textile will disappear.

int_19h
0 replies
9h10m

They certainly talk about UBI a lot, but somehow it never materializes. What does materialize, however, is tax cuts on corporations.

Perhaps they believe that you can automate policing as well, at least enough so that social unrest can be suppressed effectively?

nabla9
0 replies
1d5h

If things go as before, wage share continues to decline while unemployment does not increase.

Wage share has steadily declined in OECD countries since early 1970s. In the US since 1960s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 Wages make smaller and smaller portion of national income while capital share increases.

SoftTalker
0 replies
21h43m

Be careful what you wish for. Humans tend to do poorly when they have a lot of leisure time. Especially young people, especially males.

082349872349872
0 replies
1d5h

Why does the Ampère–Maxwell law, the largest of Maxwell's equations, not simply eat the other 3?

okasaki
20 replies
1d7h

The significant investment in robotics showcases Amazon’s commitment to innovation in its supply chain and highlights the company’s belief in the synergistic potential of human-robot collaboration. Despite the massive scale of automation, Amazon emphasizes that deploying robots has led to the creation of new skilled job categories at the company, reflecting a broader industry trend toward the integration of advanced technologies with human workforces.

An article about robots that's written by a robot. It's robots all the way down.

tacocataco
8 replies
1d5h

Maybe robots should pay taxes like humans since they are taking the jobs and the tax base that goes along with them.

LadyCailin
6 replies
1d2h

That’s too hard to do. What is “a robot” and “a job?” Replacing workers is easy enough to calculate that with, but what if I start a brand new factory that only ever used robots? The solution is wealth tax and UBI.

Get rid of regular income tax, then do a progressive wealth tax, which is enough to pay for a progressive UBI. This way, it’s no problem if you lay off all your workers to replace them with robots. In fact that’s great! Because now these people have a UBI, which frees them up to go find (or make) other work. Meanwhile the factory owner’s taxes should be going up, since his wealth is going up since he doesn’t have to pay all the workers, unless he’s still spending that money to further invest in things, which is also great.

The biggest problem really is people just hoarding wealth. If they are spending or investing it, then that’s not a problem.

rcstank
2 replies
21h26m

Many people on UBI would be content enough to not search for more work.

int_19h
0 replies
9h7m

Good, because the whole point of taking automation to its logical conclusion is that there isn't more work for them.

LadyCailin
0 replies
17h43m

So? UBI isn’t about making sure people aren’t lazy. It’s about making sure no one slips between the cracks, and can at least afford the basics.

SoftTalker
1 replies
21h40m

Very few people hoard wealth. You imagine wealthy people like Scrooge McDuck with a room full of gold coins. It's almost always invested in stocks which helps companies grow or in bonds which helps finance public works.

phatfish
0 replies
20h9m

Pretty sure a diverse portfolio will feature gold. It might not be in gold coins in the owners basement though.

Investing in stocks where most companies are doing their best to suppress worker compensation or out-right replace them with robots doesn't feel like it's doing much to help the average person either.

Public investment is on a downward trend since 2008 when governments had to save the bankers. What government spending there still is often has to filter through private service companies that are given government contracts. This usually results in good dividends and bad service.

lotsoweiners
0 replies
15h53m

You need to start with no/little increase in taxes from corporations and see how that works. Previously unthought of loopholes will keep the status quo of low corporate tax payments.

The biggest problem really is people just hoarding wealth

That is a pretty substantial problem and doesn’t seem close to the biggest one.

exe34
0 replies
1d5h

Or you could tax the companies on revenue, the way employees are.

RowanH
4 replies
1d7h

has led to the creation of new skilled job categories at the company.

"While systematically removing the unskilled job categories at the company"

The robot missed out that sentence for some reason.

raverbashing
3 replies
1d7h

Well given the complaints about work conditions it would be good if humans were given less dangerous jobs

RowanH
2 replies
1d7h

Not saying whether it’s good or bad, just the obvious bit left out.

Does really show that UBI discussion needs to be had sooner rather than later …

rickydroll
1 replies
1d6h

I'm coming to think that the wages that would have been paid to people who robots have replaced should now go into a sovereign fund to help fund UBI.

lotsoweiners
0 replies
16h14m

Haha that is funny.

ta1243
3 replies
1d6h

Don't forget all the robots reading it.

It seems the end goal of the advertising industry -- robots doing, robots writing, robots reading.

Like cockroaches and twinkies, one of the few things to survive nuclear war.

rickydroll
1 replies
1d6h

But will robots survive a nuclear war's EMP?

moffkalast
0 replies
1d6h

Military drones have to be covered in a Farraday cage layer to prevent jamming, so that would double as nuclear EMP protection. Finding a place to charge afterwards might be tricky though...

exe34
0 replies
1d5h

Have you read Accelerando by Charlie stross? He talks about a Vile Offspring that's basically what you said!

smcin
1 replies
1d7h

Who will inform the turtles they are no longer needed?

tacocataco
0 replies
1d5h

Trust me, they'll know.

methuselah_in
13 replies
1d6h

I don't know for aging economics this is somewhat good. But for developing countries it's horrible. Where humans has to search work each day to find food for night

onion2k
5 replies
1d6h

Is humanity really at a point where we can't think of anything more useful than "carry things about" and "put things in a box" for those people to do? If that's really the state we're in then a bunch of robots doing it instead is the least of our problems.

tacocataco
1 replies
1d5h

I think getting adequate housing, food, and Healthcare is useful for workers.

Perhaps if people didn't need to prove that they deserve these necessities this conversation about robots replacing humans wouldn't be so dire.

humanrebar
0 replies
22h20m

It doesn't seem like we are close to robotics providing housing, food, and healthcare for nominal costs to everyone. Seems like we still need a lot of humans working in those spaces.

In particular, durable goods (and human bodies and even hair) need a lot of maintenance. So far, at least, robots aren't especially gifted at maintenance tasks.

hackerlight
1 replies
20h5m

Welfare systems are nationalistic. The US will tax companies using robots and redistribute it to Americans while the people assembling widgets in developing countries will be out of a job. I'm still optimistic that the raw increase in economic productivity will somehow sort everyone out eventually, but it could be bumpy.

lotsoweiners
0 replies
16h16m

That corporate taxation though hasn’t worked too well so far. What makes you think that having robots would change anything?

UberFly
0 replies
20h45m

Isn't it also a problem that we've put people who's capabilities are equal to those kind of tasks into the "useless" category? Not everyone is cut out to be a programmer, which by the way, will also eventually be in the "useless" bucket. In reality, "better things to do" usually means just a lot of people in poverty.

082349872349872
4 replies
1d6h

If we also sufficiently automated food production, there ought to be enough calories to feed everyone, right? Right?

tacocataco
1 replies
1d5h

Food waste is tragic. Now no one eats that $5 iceberg lettuce head, and people are forced to eat unhealthy low nutritional carbs for sustenance.

exe34
0 replies
1d5h

Why don't they eat the $5 lettuce? Is the argument that it's too expensive here? I thought fast food was more expensive.

red_trumpet
0 replies
1d6h

Industrialized agriculture already produces enough food to feed the world. The remaining problem is a question of distribution.

lotsoweiners
0 replies
16h15m

Haha good one.

FlyingAvatar
1 replies
1d6h

I would suspect that in these countries labor is cheap enough that replacing it with robots would not be cost effective.

exe34
0 replies
1d5h

And once it's cost effective for robots to do it, you might as well move the factories close to where the stuff is needed and transport raw material that's more fungible.

batch12
11 replies
21h48m

Is there an index that ranks companies by their benefit to society? Something like amount of taxes paid, number of employees, benefits, environmental impact, etc?

rcstank
3 replies
21h40m

Who would create the weights that balance this system?

batch12
2 replies
20h44m

Whoever managed the index, I imagine.

lotsoweiners
1 replies
15h35m

In today’s news, Microsoft outbid Amazon to maintain the index.

batch12
0 replies
7h9m

What index? The question was does it exist.

paxys
1 replies
21h38m

Every attempt to algorithmically boil down a complex economy into a single number does more harm than good. Figure out your own priorities and decide for yourself.

batch12
0 replies
20h42m

Do most people have the time to evaluate every company they choose to do business with? Is there something in the middle?

notyourwork
1 replies
21h38m

Amount of taxes paid is a benefit to society? Does that mean anyone who uses deductions is less valuable to society?

batch12
0 replies
20h44m

Any company? Maybe. It depends on what the company does. Either way, that was just an example of a metric off the top of my head to support the question, not a proposal for a solution.

Ekaros
1 replies
21h39m

Value delivered or increase of value per unit of labour is very murky to measure, but something to think about. In some sense Amazon improving efficiency of retail could be a good thing in general improving the purchasing power of average consunmer.

batch12
0 replies
20h42m

Good point

starbugs
0 replies
21h41m

There's ESG. But that comes with its own challenges.

pjmlp
10 replies
23h0m

So much for IA helping to create jobs.

ben_w
6 replies
22h49m

Doesn't say much about that either way, as Amazon in particular already had a known problem of running out of people willing to work for them: https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh...

The last 200 years of automation being followed by new jobs is slightly stronger evidence that further automation will lead to new jobs, but I don't see any way that could remain true once AI is actually human performance when on hardware that runs under some appropriate electrical power threshold. Induction and Turkeys.

pjmlp
2 replies
22h48m

It turns out that for the time being robots don't complain to be handled like slaves.

The real problem is when others follow Amazon in scale, leaving humans to survive in a new order.

ben_w
1 replies
22h37m

The real problem is when others follow Amazon in scale, leaving humans to survive in a new order.

No, the problem is if humans in the set of those who have to work are able to keep ahead of the creation of new automation.

UBI short-circuits the problem because then nobody would need to work. "Who pays for UBI?" you may well ask… well, Amazon can't ship anything when nobody has any money to buy stuff with.

Separately from that, AI currently needs a lot of examples to learn from, relative to humans, so "business as usual" with no further AI breakthroughs will mean lots of people shifting employment every few years. That scenario doesn't force the world economy to choose between UBI and collapsing due to all the jobs being automated and therefore nobody having any money to buy the products made or delivered by the automation.

pjmlp
0 replies
13h27m

Only from the selected few allowed to work as druids on the AI tower, after the letcode trials, while remaining mankind struggles with what is left as jobs from a corporate managed government.

0xedd
1 replies
22h48m

My guess it has to do with shit conditions. I mean, shit break must be off the clock? F that.

ben_w
0 replies
22h34m

Likewise, but "we pissed everyone off and they refuse to work for us any more so we had to invent and manufacture robots at a huge and expensive scale" is very different from "we made robots for funsies with our big pile of money and you're all redundant now".

2OEH8eoCRo0
0 replies
22h28m

They certainly have no shortage of recruiters with weird ass names to spam me.

tossandthrow
2 replies
22h53m

If the jobs is moving boxes around, then I think we are good.

monitary and fiscal policies will keep employment high regardless of AI and robotics.

pjmlp
1 replies
22h49m

Wishful thinking.

tossandthrow
0 replies
22h46m

are you saying that employment is low now because of the automation we have seen over the past 100 years?

are you saying that interest rates are not being lowered to allow kapital. investment for job creation?

socketcluster
9 replies
13h6m

The thing that's missed here is that it's not clear that robot purchase, maintenance cost and depreciation would be cheaper than paying 7.5 people a salary... Not to mention that the robots aren't going to be spending part of their salaries at Amazon as a worker might. Also, robots won't be eligible to vote in elections to support Amazon's political aspirations which give it access to billions of government contracts.

It seems we have gone to the opposite extreme since the days of Henry Ford where he wanted to pay his workers enough for them to be able to afford the cars they made.

cactusfrog
4 replies
12h59m

The jobs robots replace aren’t good for the human soul

EasyMark
2 replies
12h26m

Being homeless and unemployed isn't good for the human soul either.

jillesvangurp
0 replies
10h24m

We have record employment currently. There are other jobs.

int_19h
0 replies
9h20m

Those two things don't have to be correlated. It is our choice as a society to make them so.

OccamsMirror
0 replies
12h38m

Until investment funds can sell souls as a commodity they will remain without value.

DonsDiscountGas
1 replies
6h7m

That belief about Henry Ford is a myth. It doesn't even pass the smell test, if a company is only selling to their own workers they can never make a profit (note that any company, even a large one like Ford or Amazon, is different from an entire economy).

Ford raised wages and cut hours because his annual turnover was 300%. He ended up making more money through savings in hiring and training costs and workers staying long enough to gain experience.

In a way it was an expression of worker power. Which only applies because workers are humans, robots don't get tired, they don't have feelings, they don't leave for a competitor paying more. The best ones are more expensive than humans right now, but robots get cheaper over time. Ideally we don't want human labor to get cheaper over time.

acureau
0 replies
4h38m

I don't think it was implied that Ford's entire customer base was his own employees, just that he paid them enough to afford the cars the company manufactured. I agree with the rest of this though.

wordpad25
0 replies
12h56m

Ford was a ruthless capitalist and antisemite. He never cared for workers affording his cars, only that they bought them. His union busting gangs were some of the worst.

Ford offering higher pay and better working hours were for employee retention which was important at the time.

up2isomorphism
0 replies
12h48m

Apart from the possible cheaper cost of robots instead of human employees, one key aspect is that robots don’t unionize.

throwaway48476
8 replies
1d7h

But will the robots be given piss bottles?

WillAdams
2 replies
1d5h

When I worked in an Amazon Warehouse, while a bathroom break was considered time-off-task, it wasn't a big deal to use the bathroom (or take some other break) whenever one wished.

https://old.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...

Basically, it was just a gym membership which I got paid for (and couldn't skip out on beyond what my available time off facilitated).

naveen99
1 replies
23h36m

Maybe jobs that require moving around should be split into 2 hr shifts, and then people with sedentary jobs can moonlight for getting in their cardio, instead of paying a gym, or walking pointlessly.

WillAdams
0 replies
17h45m

If Amazon would offer a part-time shift option where it was 1 day a week, I'd probably do it, mostly for the excercise, and partly for the extra money.

agilob
1 replies
1d6h

No, but they have free healthcare and time off to recharge their batteries

loloquwowndueo
0 replies
1d6h

Having an in-place battery swap is the equivalent of having to eat lunch at your workstation.

odiroot
0 replies
1d6h

Probably have wet sump.

mc32
0 replies
1d6h

They’ll just need oil cans instead.

dehrmann
0 replies
17h12m

Isn't this just a thing on delivery trucks? And it's pretty standard industry practice, not just Amazon? And in the scale of worker abuses, this is pretty low on the scale and more pragmatic than anything.

kypro
5 replies
1d6h

I assume this is being upvoted because HN thinks this is good? At least that's what I hear in AI threads...

AI just allows humans to work more efficiently right? The few fulfilment center workers left are probably now 100x fulfilment workers now that they can manage a fleet of robotic workers instead of human ones. As HN says, these types of innovations historically only create new job opportunities so there's probably loads of new amazing jobs these replaced workers can go do instead.

For those who are worried about the future we're creating for their children, don't worry, because when robotics and AI can do everything humans can do (and better) businesses will still want hire humans, because they still hired humans when the combustion engine was invented. I'm sure it will be the same this time. Don't be so anti-progress!

onion2k
4 replies
1d6h

Amazon's role in society is not to provide menial jobs to keep people busy though. If anything, the automation provides good, innovative jobs in robotics. Those are the sorts of jobs I think everyone should have. Leave fetching and carrying to robots, and educate people to be useful in more meaningful, fulfilling, and impactful ways.

Suggesting that robots are bad because they take jobs from people doing horrible, boring jobs just says that you want people to carry on doing that work. That's not a good look.

JaimeThompson
1 replies
1d5h

just says that you want people to carry on doing that work

Or that we don't want them to starve. We are talking about the US where their isn't really an effective solution to help people without jobs.

rcstank
0 replies
21h24m

Can you share your data on starvation in the US? I’m sincerely curious about it.

coupdejarnac
0 replies
20h51m

The people working in the low skill jobs being eliminated aren't capable of contributing in more meaningful, impactful ways. That's why they work in low skill jobs.

082349872349872
0 replies
1d5h

If the robots are the ones altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter, there are still roles for telling them to do so, and history suggests the latter work is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders but those who give advice as to what orders should be given.

(plagiarism intentional)

Nevermark
4 replies
19h27m

Automation can eliminate lots of jobs without replacement jobs.

But other times will also created new higher level jobs.

Especially when automation impacts a companies total cost for a high-demand independently consumed service or product. So that decrease costs can translate into decreased pricing for an upwardly elastic demand. And the revenue growth results offsets the need for fewer workers per revenue.

But most jobs within a company are only part of a product or service. With other parts not as automatable.

In this case, even automation that produces higher level jobs is likely to produce far fewer of them. Since savings in part of a value chain increase profits but impact total costs, and therefore pricing, at a much lower percentage. So increased demand is less likely to offset job reduction.

This is also true for any product or service from one company whose demand is anchored to any complimentary services or products from other companies.

Worse still, automation taking over only part of a high employee count, low skill job is very bad for employees. The number of workers is likely reduced, and as the job becomes simpler, their replacability goes up. Their value, and therefore pay and respect, go down.

They start to get managed ruthlessly, like just another part of the overall automation.

I expect the vast majority of Amazon’s headcount, across each of its logistical divisions, fall into that latter category.

xg15
3 replies
19h20m

This seems a bit backwards. Most demand for automating existing jobs is driven by the specific goal to reduce workers and labour costs, so of course there will be fewer jobs afterwards than before - otherwise the automation didn't fulfill its goal from the companies' POV.

Nevermark
1 replies
19h5m

Automation is to reduce cost per revenue, by reducing jobs per revenue.

Which is not quite the same as an absolute desire to eliminate jobs.

The result is initially lower employee count, but in cases where the automation significantly impacts total costs, and therefore pricing, of an independently consumed product or service, with upwardly elastic demand: the lower cost & pricing will trigger growth that also creates a job growth effect.

But those are special conditions.

As I point out, and you do too, in most situations efficiencies reduce jobs and improve profits, more than they increase demand that would create more (or mitigate lost) jobs.

xg15
0 replies
18h54m

Yeah, that's essentially saying, "yep, your slice of the pie will become ever smaller, but that's fine, because what you get in absolute terms will stay the same - the pie just has to keep growing exponentially forever".

It's obvious that this is not a sustainable solution.

(And that's assuming the company fully passes the reduced labour costs on to the consumer and doesn't just pocket it as increased profit margins)

IncreasePosts
0 replies
2h31m

But, now that amazon is saving money on labor costs, where does that extra money go? Into the pockets of shareholders, who may then go out and use that to start other businesses which hire people, or increase their consumption of goods and services which also results in greater employment.

btbuildem
2 replies
4h13m

It's difficult to hold the paradox evident in most of the commentary here: both the desire to free people from the unhealthy repetitive tedium they are bound to participate in daily, and the overarching need for "jobs".

I'm much happier watching robots take over dangerous, mundane tasks, than seeing them edge into creative, intellectual, and decision-making work. Wasn't that the dream? That robots do all our work and we just chill, enjoy a life of leisure and fulfilling activity?

Looking back in history across all the -isms, the surplus created by those labouring has rarely gone to benefit them (unless we look as far back as hunter-gatherers). I don't know that advancing technology is the credible threat here; I think the misalignment is deeper than systemic even, as it persists across lifespans of civilisations.

sydbarrett74
0 replies
3h56m

A life of leisure is the mirage-like carrot that the PTB dangle in front of our noses. Simultaneously, they intensify advertising to keep us on the hedonic treadmill, and thus trapped in a life of debt peonage.

RaftPeople
0 replies
2h53m

I don't know that advancing technology is the credible threat here

The thing most people don't realize is that the robots in question aren't really even taking jobs that existed prior to the ecommerce model, and the work the robots are doing used to be handled by the consumer.

Details:

1-The robots are taking over the job of moving goods from the storage shelf to the packer.

2-This is pure "walking" time when humans do it, 10 miles per day in a typical DC, not value add.

3-Before ecommerce, with brick and mortar, the goods were picked in bulk and shipped to stores and placed on the racks, and the consumer was the person that walked to get the item and bring it to the packer (cashier). Some of the walking was done in the DC, but not nearly to the same extent.

4-There are multiple different ways to solve this problem of humans walking all over the DC to pick one+two piece orders in a way that is efficient. "Robots" in the form of moving shelves (Amazon), or conveyors+sorters with bulk pick then sort by order, or etc.

littlestymaar
1 replies
1d6h

It's a good thing actually given that the worker conditions are pretty terrible there.

But it is only a good thing if the increased productivity translates into better wages, increased vacations and reduced work days and not helping Jeff getting a bigger yacht.

And for that, it must be an active government policy.

bamboozled
0 replies
21h35m

Soon Jeff will have ten yachts and his job each day will be choosing which yacht to use once he has automated himself out of work. It will be gruelling.

seydor
0 replies
20h54m

Wait until amazon replaces china

mandibeet
0 replies
20h5m

Robotic future is coming

callwhendone
0 replies
20h31m

Wonder what the job is like fixing those robots.

SMAAART
0 replies
16h40m

Whether the article is accurate or not, that is the trend.

And we've seen it coming for a while now.

CircuitMaestro
0 replies
5h6m

With the rise of AI, the entire economic structure will undergo even more significant changes.

Animats
0 replies
19h51m

As Amazon really using that humanoid robot in production? Or is that just a demo?

The first big breakthrough was when Amazon bought Kiva, which makes those little mobile platforms that move racks of goods around. Those are mechanically simple and cost-effective, and have been very successful. Amazon is now making about 1000 units a day of the current model.[1] This is about 10% of the human birth rate in the US.

Moving standardized totes around automatically is decades old. Picking things out of bins has been difficult, and gets better as computer vision gets better. Amazon is still struggling with that.

Amazon Prime Air drone delivery starts soon.[2]

[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-robotics-...

[2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-prime...