The machines are coming for our jobs

SkyChaser said:
. On top of that, it's ridiculously hard to get a resume through their filtering system. Every single job that I have ever had was the result of walking into the company and asking for an application. I've applied to hundreds of jobs online and never got a single one, but have been hired for every job that I went to in person.
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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
I have been preaching that for decades. I see my brother doing it and I kick him in the butt (verbally, not literally). People apply for jobs on-line, or reply to help wanted ads, then lay on the couch waiting for a phone call. It almost never works, but they keep doing it, and keep complaining.

When I used to place an ad it was because I was desperate for help. Then I would practically have to put up barricades for the onslaught of non-qualified applications (I wouldn't call most of them resumes). I wound up putting 99% of them on the reject pile for minor typos or grammar errors or any of a hundred other mistakes. Most of my good hires walked in and asked if they could speak to me. I often hired those people even if I wasn't looking for help because people with motivation are usually the best employees.
 
There is a SciFi writer, Mack Reynolds. In one of his future societies, there is a GIT. Guaranteed income for everyone. And interestingly, he postulated a cashless society, where everything was paid by inserting your ID card. Written in the early 19550s

"Reynolds has been called a "cautious," "critical," or "ambiguous"] Utopian writer because his many explorations of ideal societies, such as his updates of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887 and Equality, focus as much on Utopia's dilemmas as on its benefits. Typically, Reynolds' Utopias are worlds of almost complete industrial automation so that no one needs to work, everyone lives in security thanks to a guaranteed basic income, and those who volunteer for the few jobs left are chosen via a quantitative ability test. At the same time, the population's very life of leisure has led to species stasis by discouraging the continual striving that gives humanity its purpose[15] as in the story "Utopian," or the Utopian welfare state has metamorphosed into a caste society where those in power aim to keep it, blocking for its other members the opportunity to exert themselves to the full extent of their abilities, as in the Joe Mauser series."
 
I received this terrifying email today:
Are you a writer looking to up your productivity and get some help with your novel? Look no further than ChatGPT! This program help you take your writing to the next level. Not only can it assist you with generating ideas and suggestions, but it can also help you write more efficiently. In this article, we'll explore the many ways ChatGPT can help you write a novel, from generating descriptions to writing dialogue and crafting scenes.
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Domenick said:
I received this terrifying email today:
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Why is it terrifying? If someone has a good story to tell, and automation helps them write it, why is that bad? By the time an author's work goes through various editor's reviews, it is often greatly changed, too. Is that terrifying?
 
steingar said:
Still plenty of things for people to do.
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Like breed? :eek:

Like it or not, automation will continue to increase. The problem is, what happens to all of those people whose jobs are automated away and who can't (or won't) be retrained for another job. Not everybody has the intellectual capability to be a computer programmer or even a machine maintenance technician. 100 years ago, a man with a strong back and a weak mind was perfectly employable. Today, not so much.

Of course we could always outlaw backhoes which would create lots of openings for ditchdiggers...
 
Pi1otguy said:
At what point will it be ok for us as consumers to embrace automation?

Continuing the trend, more and more stores have self checkout, enabling 1 worker to watch watch 4-8 stations. At first we were to avoid them and wait in the longer, slower manned lines. But it's that still the case?

How about fast food? 1 place I went had a voice recognition system talk to me instead of the crew. And why did it speak much clearer than the humans ever did? What about places with kiosks? Or with automated fries and grill stations?

Heck, I can't remember the last time I've actually called for a briefing.
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You obviously missed the message of the Paul Bunyan story in grade school. The purpose of modern invention is to replace human labor with more efficient technology.
 
Clip4 said:
You obviously missed the message of the Paul Bunyan story in grade school. The purpose of modern invention is to replace human labor with more efficient technology.
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John Henry?

Nauga,
who says, "Dig ditch or die tryin'."
 
Clip4 said:
You obviously missed the message of the Paul Bunyan story in grade school. The purpose of modern invention is to replace human labor with more efficient technology.
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What if there aren't an equal number of replacement jobs?
 
Pi1otguy said:
What if there aren't an equal number of replacement jobs?
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Then you have to restructure society for it. People especially here recoil from socialism and mixes their concerns with communism when the two aren’t exactly the same, but if you have no work for lots of people you either make work or you feed them any how, or you can go to a dark place where the unemployed are somehow toss aside.
 
JOhnH said:
I'll admit that I often tend to have strong opinions on certain topics, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why employers are having such a hard time hiring employees? Do people really NOT want to work? Then how do they support themselves? How do they eat? Are they choosing homelessness over working?
I know at least 5 people that desperately want a job but can't find one. They are all over 50 and lost good jobs during Covid lockdowns and now they can't find anything. I've given my younger (57yrs) brother thousands over the past two years. He lives with his son who has a blue collar job that doesn't pay much.

I can't explain the gap in help-wanted signs and people that can't find work.
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I am the controller for a composites/plastics molding shop. We have about 250 employees, most of which run hot presses or CNC machines, with a small portion of assembly labor. We tend to run about 1/3 of our hourly workforce through temp agencies because it's extremely difficult to find applicants for that type of work with just "help wanted" ads. Additionally, we typically bring in 4-8 employees each week and half of them will either walk off the job without saying anything or will be terminated for showing up late multiple times in the first 2 weeks (or failing drug screenings). It isn't glorious work, and the heat press shop can be somewhat brutal in the dog days of summer as there is only so much HVAC capacity you can direct towards people standing in front of a 250F hydraulic press. It can be tough to get 20% of the temp labor hires to make it past the 90-day trial period for consideration to be hired full-time. Meanwhile we get to pay that hefty premium to the temp agencies.

Even when the pay is competitive with similar jobs, people don't want that kind of work anymore.
 
JOhnH said:
Automation is coming, and would probably come eventually anyway. But a lot of what we are seeing now is the direct result of government trying to mandate a living wage via minimum wage legislation. It is just another manifestation of unintended consequences, even if 100% predictable. Rather than raising the standard of living for the lower income people, they are putting lower income into the NO income category.
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What you say is part of the problem, but I think the situation is more complex than your statement.
 
JOhnH said:
That’s where Soylent green comes into play.
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Mmm. Minty.
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Cap'n Jack said:
What you say is part of the problem, but I think the situation is more complex than your statement.
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Agreed. The problem is much more complex than my single point in that post.

edit: And there is no single or simple solution.
 
Pi1otguy said:
What if there aren't an equal number of replacement jobs?
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Depends. My folks were Depression era babies. They each had a larger number of aunts and uncles than brothers and sisters, largely because infant mortality went down and the need for free labor on the farm was greatly reduced as commercial farming was industrialized.

Subsequently, my parents and their siblings also had children who have fewer aunts and uncles than siblings so the replacement rate dwindled, but not such that each subsequent generation didn’t have it all-around better than the previous. Meanwhile, the nature of work evolved to employ more people as the overall population grew.

The common generational demographic I belong to is this first generation in a very, very long time that is smaller than it’s following generation.

The only thing that’s been constant is that somewhere around 2/3ds of adults in each generation have generally been gainfully employed for most of their lives and their working lives. Historically that’s been 30 or 40 years of a 50 or 60 year life. Now that folks are living 70+ years, there’s real consideration being given to an average working career spanning 50 years, so as people live longer, resulting in working longer, and amid a growing population, more jobs are required anyways.

The ethical question left to answer is does ultimate efficiency trump required employment levels. That’s a question each company has to work out on it’s own. If people don’t want a job, then that’s a motivational factors problem for them and an ethical problem for everyone else.
 
TCABM said:
Automated or self serve? I refuse self service checkout on principle. If they aren’t going to pay me to do the job of the checker, and they aren’t going to provide a discount for using their quasi vending machine service, I’m not going to allow them the extra margin.
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I am paid in the time-savings by being able to whip through with my three items and get on with my day.
 
Blue prism and competitors, chatgpt….automation and human displacement is here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Pi1otguy said:
What if there aren't an equal number of replacement jobs?
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The humans will have some choices. They can reduce their population, which is already occurring in China, Russia and many other countries in the world. The work week can be shortened. They can retire some of the work force earlier or other pay people to do nothing programs. People can become more self sufficient growing their own food and relying less on stuff like lawn services.
 
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JOhnH said:
I'm all for reducing the population. Instead of paying people to have MORE babies, perhaps we should pay people to get abortions (AND sterilized).
:stirpot:
:blush:
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Don't worry. There are plenty of women doing exactly that without any payment necessary!

I personally don't think that we need to be doing any population reduction methods. The US birth rate is down over 20% in the last five or ten years. I think it's more likely that there will be a human shortage once those kids are in their 30s or 40s and the older generations have all retired.
 
SkyChaser said:
Don't worry. There are plenty of women doing exactly that without any payment necessary!

I personally don't think that we need to be doing any population reduction methods. The US birth rate is down over 20% in the last five or ten years. I think it's more likely that there will be a human shortage once those kids are in their 30s or 40s and the older generations have all retired.
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Can recommend some travel in africa or asia to refine this view. We're not remotely short of humans or indolence.
 
One problem is that it's generally the smarter people who are having less kids, reducing the average IQ just when we need more smart people...
 
schmookeeg said:
Can recommend some travel in Africa or Asia to refine this view. We're not remotely short of humans or indolence.
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I know there are plenty of places where the birth rate is booming. Most of those people will never be wealthy enough to make it to the US, so their presence on the planet doesn't really affect the job market in the US.
 
JOhnH said:
Do people really NOT want to work?
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The fact that we have record low unemployment, the lowest since 1969, suggests that people want to work. Some employers just haven't gotten the memo that in a capitalist economy, workers also get to shop their skills to those willing to pay.

Sam D said:
The machines already came for our jobs. Look at a farm today vs 100 years ago. How about a seaport? A factory? Where are all those unemployed workers? I think we’ll be just fine.
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Depends who you mean by "we". There used to be dozens of jobs that someone with an IQ of 90 could work and support a family. That's no longer true. And it's only going to get worse. One of them, trucking, is going to be disrupted any year now to the tune of millions of middle class jobs lost and not a whole lot of clarity what those people will be able to do to replace that salary.
 
SkyChaser said:
I know there are plenty of places where the birth rate is booming. Most of those people will never be wealthy enough to make it to the US, so their presence on the planet doesn't really affect the job market in the US.
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NAFTA says hi.

Massive Massive amounts of manufacturing jobs went to Mexico, then China after that debacle.
 
172andyou said:
The fact that we have record low unemployment, the lowest since 1969, suggests that people want to work. Some employers just haven't gotten the memo that in a capitalist economy, workers also get to shop their skills to those willing to pay.
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The low unemployment actually means very little. It only counts people actively looking for work. It doesn't count all the people that really don't want to work. It doesn't count all those people on the side of the highway with cardboard signs telling me how God will love me if I donate to them. It doesn't count all the housewives and househusbands that have given up looking for work because government benefits makes it possible to stay home. Both sides of the aisle tout low unemployment rates when they are in office and point out its fallacy when the other party is in office. The only statistic that really means anything is the workforce participation rate.
 
EdFred said:
NAFTA says hi.

Massive Massive amounts of manufacturing jobs went to Mexico, then China after that debacle.
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That's true. I don't know too much about it, but just the fact that the people in Mexico and China existed didn't cause the jobs to move elsewhere. It appears the government did that, or at least created the environment where the investment of moving the facilities overseas was less burdensome than keeping the jobs stateside.
 
172andyou said:
The fact that we have record low unemployment, the lowest since 1969, suggests that people want to work.
....
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be careful with the claims of record low unemployment. There has to be consideration of the people who are no longer seeking employment but could work.

I suppose I could be lumped with the count of people who could work but aren't (I retired kind of early).
 
SkyChaser said:
It appears the government did that, or at least created the environment where the investment of moving the facilities overseas was less burdensome than keeping the jobs stateside.
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Governments were responsible for coming up with trade agreements that kept protective tariffs off products and then companies used that to their advantage to streamline their processes and move operations to more efficient places. This is part of the reason why inflation was so stubbornly low for a while, disinflation from globalization. Win-win for everyone. Well, everyone except the people whose job got sent to a new, lower cost country. But then again, if someone with a 5th grade education from China can assemble a product almost as well as a HS educated American, maybe that American should move into a role that's more challenging.

For people whose jobs are automated/shipped off my only recommendation is to be an American, suck it up, learn a new skill and get a new job. That's the only way we stay at the top of the totem-pole as a country. There are, quite literally, hundreds of millions if not billions of people around the globe living in abject poverty who would do anything: learn any skill, start a business, or take on any task just for a chance at a middle class American lifestyle. Their countries just don't have that kind of stability and opportunity. So the idea that the USA should protect high paying, low-risk, low skill jobs -- and try and make them safe from automation/offshoring... that just makes me cringe. It shows a clear tendency towards a culture of complacency and entitlement.

So when people are worrying about whether they may be automated away -- it's important to recognize that's a totally preventable outcome. Simply focus on doing your job in a way that makes you not-automatable; contribute more than a machine ever could. Use your brain, pitch new solutions, work on the hard/corner-cases. Try doing something that demonstrates your value as a comparatively highly educated American. Or, just get used to long term unemployment. The choice is really up to each person.
 
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Bob Noel said:
be careful with the claims of record low unemployment. There has to be consideration of the people who are no longer seeking employment but could work.

I suppose I could be lumped with the count of people who could work but aren't (I retired kind of early).
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The labor force participation rate is here. Back in the early 2000s, it was in the 66% range, it trickled downwards to about 63% just before the pandemic. It took a big hit, down to 60%, but has since recovered to 62%. I believe the explanation of why it declined over the last 20 years is that the average age of the workforce had increased, and the early part of the baby boom, some of which had defined benefit pensions, had started to retire. I don't know how much higher the participation rate is going to increase. One reason given is the number of people suffering from long covid. Brookings estimates the number affected could be as high as four million.
 
FormerHangie said:
I believe the explanation of why it declined over the last 20 years is that the average age of the workforce had increased, and the early part of the baby boom, some of which had defined benefit pensions, had started to retire.
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Yep, that's right. The participation bounced around between 62.5 and 63% for about five years before the pandemic and today is back up to 62.4%.

I guess it's those lazy retirees the hiring managers are complaining about when they say "no one wants to work anymore" :p
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Governments were responsible for coming up with trade agreements that kept protective tariffs off products and then companies used that to their advantage to streamline their processes and move operations to more efficient places. This is part of the reason why inflation was so stubbornly low for a while, disinflation from globalization. Win-win for everyone. Well, everyone except the people whose job got sent to a new, lower cost country. But then again, if someone with a 5th grade education from China can assemble a product almost as well as a HS educated American, maybe that American should move into a role that's more challenging.

For people whose jobs are automated/shipped off my only recommendation is to be an American, suck it up, learn a new skill and get a new job. That's the only way we stay at the top of the totem-pole as a country. There are, quite literally, hundreds of millions if not billions of people around the globe living in abject poverty who would do anything: learn any skill, start a business, or take on any task just for a chance at a middle class American lifestyle. Their countries just don't have that kind of stability and opportunity. So the idea that the USA should protect high paying, low-risk, low skill jobs -- and try and make them safe from automation/offshoring... that just makes me cringe. It shows a clear tendency towards a culture of complacency and entitlement.

So when people are worrying about whether they may be automated away -- it's important to recognize that's a totally preventable outcome. Simply focus on doing your job in a way that makes you not-automatable; contribute more than a machine ever could. Use your brain, pitch new solutions, work on the hard/corner-cases. Try doing something that demonstrates your value as a comparatively highly educated American. Or, just get used to long term unemployment. The choice is really up to each person.
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SO much wrong here, I don't even know where to start.
 
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