OT: automation and robotics as manufacturing job killers

[sdduuuude]

and unions.

[The-Shoveler]

Nope neither of those will stop AI and Robots.

[carlsbadworker]

I think some of the comments are short-sighted. Yes, automation and robots are going to kill manufacturing jobs and retail jobs, but so what? That doesn’t mean overall jobs are going to decline.

Manufacturing already employs less than 10% of the U.S. workforce and retail is on the way below 10% soon. So when these jobs disappear, just like water, they will just flow elsewhere.

First, funds will be established to educate these unemployed workers. Do you think they will use efficient online education method? Nope, that’s hard to monitor and discriminate against low-income American, so I bet they will put more money in traditional classroom styles. So that means more teachers, and more federal and state employees to monitor the spending.

Second, when people are unemployed, they will likely need more health and social assistance, a segment that has quietly grown above 12% of U.S. workforce already, given most are government funded and inefficiently ran.

Last, the resulting income gap and wealth distribution means the current housing inventory is completely disconnected from the real America. People need either more one-bedroom apartments or McMansions near the beach, both of which are not adequately produced yet and that means more construction jobs. Or Trump could simply order to build more infrastructure, and FED can keep printing money to pay for it. And construction has seen absolutely no productivity growth for years, because, after all, there is no Moore’s Law for backhoes.

So in summary, when jobs are disappearing from manufacturing and retails, the part of economy that we see huge productivity growth in the past few years, they will just migrate to the unproductive sectors of the economy: education, healthcare, construction and government itself…all of which will just become a much larger percentage of the economy in the next decade. And new jobs will be created there.

[The-Shoveler]

One day soon there will be a classroom where a bunch of computer science students are sitting down taking their final exam and on the test, will be a question.

“Why computers will never become smarter than humans and take over the world?”

Suddenly one of the students looking at that question jumps up and runs out of the classroom laughing hysterically.

[spdrun]

The problem with housing isn’t lack of ability to build — it’s (local, not Federal) regulations preventing construction of certain types of properties in certain areas. i.e. 1-bedroom apartment towers in SF, beachfront MaMansions.

As far as Trump getting anything done re: infrastructure, his batting average isn’t exactly stellar so far. And again, the problem isn’t ability, it’s regulation. This time by unions that deal with state departments of transportation. Local, not Federal.

[afx114]

Imagine how bummed all the oarators were when the printing press showed up.
Imagine how bummed all the pony express riders were when the telegraph showed up.
Imagine how bummed all the horse breeders were when the horseless carriage showed up.
Same as it ever was.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=carlsbadworker]I think some of the comments are short-sighted. Yes, automation and robots are going to kill manufacturing jobs and retail jobs, but so what? That doesn’t mean overall jobs are going to decline.[/quote]

Retail and Manufacturing? Try white collar. Bye-bye 80-90% of those office white collar jobs.

Accounting, bye-bye.
Human Resources, bye-bye.
Tech Support, bye- bye.
Customer Service Positions, bye-bye.
Legal support positions, bye-bye.
R&D, yep, lots of mid and low level stuff going bye-bye. Automation is seriously letting Pharma consolidate R&D staff.
Tax departments, bye-bye.
Medical support, bye-bye (robots already reading x-rays and results).

True creating positions and sales positions will remain, but a lot of the positions doing the grunt work under the creative designers is going out.

Those people may still be employed, they may even still do something similar to related to it, but they’ll be in a very different organizational structure likely will be either gigging it or trying a startup.

[spdrun]

Accounting: you’re kidding. Try presenting a ‘puker with a basket of receipts and hand-written notes.
HR: doubt it. Might be reduced, but someone has to physically deal with new hires, interviews, etc.
Tech Support: More is needed now than in 1992. Think about this.
Customer Service: Maybe, but calls that the ‘puker can’t handle will be passed to a human eventually.
Legal and research support: maybe.
Tax departments: To a point, but someone still has to interact with human judges, officials, etc.
Medical support: Someone still needs to make sure the results make sense. Plus x-rays don’t run themselves. Aside from radiation risks, take a mammogram. There’s a fine line between adequately compressed and “boob popping like a grape.”

[no_such_reality]

spdrun Bye-bye 80-90% of those office white collar jobs

If it wasn’t clear I meant 80-90% of those jobs, not the entire departments. Many of those I’ve listed I’ve already done the beginning steps of the automation roll-outs that trimmed their staffs.

Accounting? Expense report receipts? You’re kidding, credit card integrated automated expense tracking and reporting through software. If you can’t enter your one-off receipts, your department admin maybe will help you if you’re a good producer, otherwise your manager’s manager is telling them to tell you to pull your head out of your *ss.

HR? Employee self service portals, automated background checks, automated hiring screening that frankly does a better job than any but the most specialized HR recruiter.

And we could talk about the fact the 5 person HR system development team that did all the software updates and stuff is bye-bye replaced by an 3rd party provider, the provider had couple hundred customers our size and basically all of them cut their HRiS development staff, the 3rd party company was like 500 people in total, management, sales, every body.

Right now all those people rolled around and went to the growth field in app development for and internet but IMO, there is massive levels of redundancy being built.

Seriously:

Letgo, Wallapop, Craigslist/Pro, Ebay, Carosell, Decluttr, VarageSale, not to mention Amazon, Ebay and Facebook.

Consolidation is coming. Self service is here. It’s about relationships going forward and 80-90% of todays white collar ‘grunt’ work jobs are all going bye-bye.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=AN]It started in the factory, but it won’t stop there. I heard McDonald is spending tens of millions in automation to supplement their work force. I feel like this will only accelerate. Once McDonald is successful of going mostly automation, I’m sure other fast food chain will follow. Then other casual dining place will do the same as well. Red Robin is already kind of doing this already.[/quote]

Restaurants already have the technology for people to order without human intervention, and it can speed up the process and reduce errors. I’ve ordered Chipotle online in the past. My wife is a big fan of the Starbucks App.

It’s interesting and a bit worrisome, because the service industry has been doing ok in recent decades while manufacturing struggled. But except in cases where a real live human is demanded by consumers, service is likely to decline.

On the flip side, a lot of consumers do still avoid self-service check out lanes except as a last resort.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=no_such_reality][quote=carlsbadworker]I think some of the comments are short-sighted. Yes, automation and robots are going to kill manufacturing jobs and retail jobs, but so what? That doesn’t mean overall jobs are going to decline.[/quote]

Retail and Manufacturing? Try white collar. Bye-bye 80-90% of those office white collar jobs.

Accounting, bye-bye.
Human Resources, bye-bye.
Tech Support, bye- bye.
Customer Service Positions, bye-bye.
Legal support positions, bye-bye.
R&D, yep, lots of mid and low level stuff going bye-bye. Automation is seriously letting Pharma consolidate R&D staff.
Tax departments, bye-bye.
Medical support, bye-bye (robots already reading x-rays and results).

True creating positions and sales positions will remain, but a lot of the positions doing the grunt work under the creative designers is going out.

Those people may still be employed, they may even still do something similar to related to it, but they’ll be in a very different organizational structure likely will be either gigging it or trying a startup.[/quote]

What time scale are we talking? 20 years? 30?

In the 3-5 year time frame we’re still a long ways off from a lot of your examples. Think of the last time you tried to use a phone menu or website to get something done. Routine transaction? You probably were successful. Anything beyond the 5-10 most typical activities? You probably needed human intervention.

In my company it could be hugely time saving to be able to streamline the purchasing process, but the existing inventory management software is terrible and cost prohibitive if you have tons of different items that are re-ordered infrequently.

As for R&D in pharma, there have been some significant advances in automation for some tasks, but a lot of the data processing software out there frankly is still awful, and right now companies need to invest a lot in their AI to try to make it remotely better. There also are regulations in place for Development that ultimately require a human to take responsibility for data. There’s also a fun trend that as it becomes easier to generate more and more data, the FDA starts demanding more and more data in submission packets. Funny how that works, but it keeps me in a job.

I do know that there already is a trend towards eliminating accountants for personal taxes, as for a lot of us TurboTax is more accurate and better. The accountant often just serves as a handholder and in some cases a person to point the finger at if something goes wrong down the line.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=no_such_reality]
HR? Employee self service portals, automated background checks, automated hiring screening that frankly does a better job than any but the most specialized HR recruiter.
[/quote]
I hate our Employee Self Service Portal so much. Using it wastes a lot of my time at work.

Our automated hiring screener is awful. We’ve had great candidates whose resumes we only saw because of referrals not make it through the automated screener.

At least right now companies that try to automate these sort of functions end up putting burden on other employees.

[spdrun]

Exactly. Someone who got arrested for w33d five years ago might not make it through, but might be brilliant anyway. Such laws are made by and for idiots.

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