There are two big industries that are going to be the canaries in the coal mine, and be the first to take serious hits - Driving, and Fast Food.
Both Uber and Lyft make it clear on their websites that their future is an autonomous fleet, and they’re testing heavily. Waymo has been testing for months, and is starting to roll out in many cities, including mine. Every one of those driverless cars is replacing a human job.
Further, many of the people driving rideshares, would be listed as unemployed, if they weren’t able to eke out a meager living driving. Take away this job, and it isn’t like they have a lot of options to pivot to. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving. Those lost jobs are going straight to the unemployment rolls.
And what about truck drivers? That is another serious driving industry that is going to be fully replaced before long. Again, those drivers don’t have a lot of other options.
Fast Food is the other one. Every fast food corp has been testing a robotic kitchen for years now, and I’d be surprised if even a single one isn’t ready to roll out tomorrow. They are already getting us ready by both phasing in app use, and kiosk use, but also masking the kitchen area. It used to be that you could see the kitchens in fast food places, but new ones are hiding the prep area behind walls, where they can’t be seen, because soon they’ll all be automated.
Fast food is a traditional first job, or a second job, or a second income, or a supplement to retirement, etc. A LOT of households rely on fast food jobs, but within a decade, most of them will be fully automated.
Further, what will happen is that a robotic warehouse will load an autonomous truck, which will go to fully automated fast food outlets, where it will be robotically unloaded, stored, and eventually prepared, and served to a customer, without a human touching it anywhere along the way.
The tech to do all of that exists right now. The only reason they haven’t done it is because they know the consumer backlash will be enormous, but they won’t be able to resist the lure of all those new profits for too long, and somebody will finally take the plunge and be the first. They’ll get savaged in the media, but then everyone will follow, and 10 years from now, every fast outlet will be automated, and millions of jobs will evaporate.
Fast food is already as automated as it can be. Replacing cooks with robot kitchen is looks good as a management dream, but anyone who tried it quickly discovers that you need industrial robots, and they are fuckng expensive, and you need engineers anyway to maintain them. So you are replacing cheap cooks with outrageously expensive engineers.
“But no”, some ignorant CEO says, “we’re not assembling cars, we don’t need pneumatic robot arm that can lift 10 tons”. Yeah, you still need a robot arm, and it’s just a miniaturized industrial robot, not any much cheaper.
But robot kitchen exist, and they are actually very profitable. Go to your nearest grocery shop. 99% of items on the shelves were produced by a robot. Everything in a plastic wrap, everything in a jar, was produced on a conveyor. Even fresh produce involves some kind of automation.
So robots won’t fry your potatoes, because french fries have really short shelf life. Otherwise they totally could, but hiring a cook is cheaper.
And it totally has the potential to collapse on itself. Let AI replace a lot of office workers. Let self-driving cars replace drivers. Let robots replace fast food workers and delivery persons. Move manufacturing jobs offshore. Everyone is unemployed and nobody can afford your robot-created fast food anymore. You have no customers and go bankrupt
And what about truck drivers? That is another serious driving industry that is going to be fully replaced before long. Again, those drivers don’t have a lot of other options.
Truck driving would have a major knock-on effect as well from diners and truck stops, which are often major cash centers of smaller towns.
As those people move on to other jobs, there will be growth in other areas. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of the economy. Rather let’s make sure everyone is generally being taken care of. We can’t put society in stasis for fear of someone somewhere losing out.
Will there be enough jobs for all those displaced in those ‘other areas’? And how long is it going to take for those to materialise?
Traditionally society has overcome these type of changes. But they weren’t as wide as this one (AI has a huge range of usecases) nor was the change as rapid. And as AI grows into new areas it will continue to displace jobs and human activity.
I really doubt this will turn into a net positive for society and if it does it will still be a very hard transition for at least a decade.
I’m not saying leave them out to dry, but we shouldn’t do labor just for the sake of it. If we can automate it and we save labor overall, that’s how society advances. The real question is who gets the benefit, and how we take care of people’s needs, not if it’s a good idea to improve labor efficiency
Would love me some Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, but looking how things are progressing socially, I have my doubts that things are going to end well for anyone worth less then a few million.
There are two big industries that are going to be the canaries in the coal mine, and be the first to take serious hits - Driving, and Fast Food.
Both Uber and Lyft make it clear on their websites that their future is an autonomous fleet, and they’re testing heavily. Waymo has been testing for months, and is starting to roll out in many cities, including mine. Every one of those driverless cars is replacing a human job.
Further, many of the people driving rideshares, would be listed as unemployed, if they weren’t able to eke out a meager living driving. Take away this job, and it isn’t like they have a lot of options to pivot to. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving. Those lost jobs are going straight to the unemployment rolls.
And what about truck drivers? That is another serious driving industry that is going to be fully replaced before long. Again, those drivers don’t have a lot of other options.
Fast Food is the other one. Every fast food corp has been testing a robotic kitchen for years now, and I’d be surprised if even a single one isn’t ready to roll out tomorrow. They are already getting us ready by both phasing in app use, and kiosk use, but also masking the kitchen area. It used to be that you could see the kitchens in fast food places, but new ones are hiding the prep area behind walls, where they can’t be seen, because soon they’ll all be automated.
Fast food is a traditional first job, or a second job, or a second income, or a supplement to retirement, etc. A LOT of households rely on fast food jobs, but within a decade, most of them will be fully automated.
Further, what will happen is that a robotic warehouse will load an autonomous truck, which will go to fully automated fast food outlets, where it will be robotically unloaded, stored, and eventually prepared, and served to a customer, without a human touching it anywhere along the way.
The tech to do all of that exists right now. The only reason they haven’t done it is because they know the consumer backlash will be enormous, but they won’t be able to resist the lure of all those new profits for too long, and somebody will finally take the plunge and be the first. They’ll get savaged in the media, but then everyone will follow, and 10 years from now, every fast outlet will be automated, and millions of jobs will evaporate.
It’s inevitable.
Fast food is already as automated as it can be. Replacing cooks with robot kitchen is looks good as a management dream, but anyone who tried it quickly discovers that you need industrial robots, and they are fuckng expensive, and you need engineers anyway to maintain them. So you are replacing cheap cooks with outrageously expensive engineers.
“But no”, some ignorant CEO says, “we’re not assembling cars, we don’t need pneumatic robot arm that can lift 10 tons”. Yeah, you still need a robot arm, and it’s just a miniaturized industrial robot, not any much cheaper.
But robot kitchen exist, and they are actually very profitable. Go to your nearest grocery shop. 99% of items on the shelves were produced by a robot. Everything in a plastic wrap, everything in a jar, was produced on a conveyor. Even fresh produce involves some kind of automation.
So robots won’t fry your potatoes, because french fries have really short shelf life. Otherwise they totally could, but hiring a cook is cheaper.
And it totally has the potential to collapse on itself. Let AI replace a lot of office workers. Let self-driving cars replace drivers. Let robots replace fast food workers and delivery persons. Move manufacturing jobs offshore. Everyone is unemployed and nobody can afford your robot-created fast food anymore. You have no customers and go bankrupt
Truck driving would have a major knock-on effect as well from diners and truck stops, which are often major cash centers of smaller towns.
As those people move on to other jobs, there will be growth in other areas. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of the economy. Rather let’s make sure everyone is generally being taken care of. We can’t put society in stasis for fear of someone somewhere losing out.
Will there be enough jobs for all those displaced in those ‘other areas’? And how long is it going to take for those to materialise?
Traditionally society has overcome these type of changes. But they weren’t as wide as this one (AI has a huge range of usecases) nor was the change as rapid. And as AI grows into new areas it will continue to displace jobs and human activity.
I really doubt this will turn into a net positive for society and if it does it will still be a very hard transition for at least a decade.
What money are they going to use to move from their home in nowheresville to somewhere where jobs are
I’m not saying leave them out to dry, but we shouldn’t do labor just for the sake of it. If we can automate it and we save labor overall, that’s how society advances. The real question is who gets the benefit, and how we take care of people’s needs, not if it’s a good idea to improve labor efficiency
Would love me some Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, but looking how things are progressing socially, I have my doubts that things are going to end well for anyone worth less then a few million.