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Infernalism t1_ivqcgs9 wrote

I wonder what the numbers are for total jobs lost to automation as opposed to robots.

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danielisbored t1_ivqnujd wrote

An industrial robot might replace one or two people each shift. So even across multiple shifts, you lose 6 people, at most, and probably have to add one back for machine maintenance. Whereas buying MS Excel took departments of 20+ MBAs and turned them into two or three people with associates doing the same thing. Same for medical records, drafting/technical drawing, and so many other. Most people would even think about the latter as "lost to automation" though.

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simple_mech t1_ivr2bub wrote

I work in the Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) industry. We’re still doing the same thing today, 20-25 full-time employees down to <5 FTEs.

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rulerofrules t1_ivrnxjd wrote

Back in my day things you couldn't reach just weren't for you, your kids today and your elevated platforms

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JubalHarshawII t1_ivvnxt7 wrote

I have a friend in robotics and automation, he would go into a factory with 600 employees and when he left there would be 6. He finally quit because he couldn't live with himself anymore. But automation is coming for most of us, a structural change in society will be needed or we'll end up with a lot of ppl starving in the streets.

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bane5454 t1_ivrgd4k wrote

Hi! I work in automation, and let me tell you, the answer is a resounding “not enough”.

Society is built around working for a wage, so as a result, it’s understandable that there’s a lot of people who are checked out from their jobs and only punch a clock. There’s also a lot of people who ended up replacing someone who was like this and find out painfully quick that they can do the entire job in 15 hours a week or less, but still have to work 40. Society isn’t ready for the level of automation that we have available today, mainly because society would be invariably damaged if automation started to actually replace people’s jobs at the level it’s capable of. I don’t see a future in which there’s both capitalism AND upward social class mobility as a result, but the saving grace for society rn is that most business owners are not automation experts.

That said, I’m confident that most companies could axe 30-40% of their workforce and still perform at the same level if not better, but I’d rather see a world in which automation and improvements in technology actually help all humans by allowing us to reclaim more of our time and lives. Basically, if the new guy can do the same job in 15 hours, let him, and make sure he gets paid the same salary as he would working 40. That’s what I’d like but the opposite is more likely - in 10-20 years, the wave will be at its crest and automation should be cutting down corporate spending by eliminating inefficiencies at an unprecedented rate. What will happen next?

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CrashDeTrash t1_ivsmmug wrote

I'm also in automations field, and I have a scary amount of free time at work. However when something finally goes wrong, the entire production stops

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8lackJack8lack t1_ivs6lra wrote

"That said, I’m confident that most companies could axe 30-40% of their workforce and still perform at the same level if not better"

So 30% of the world now isn't earning an income to spend at the companies that just automated their jobs.

I don't think those companies are gonna be performing at the same level profit wise.

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TheOtherSarah t1_ivsjyry wrote

Like they said, you can pay people a full salary for getting the same job done quicker. Don’t fire 30%, have all of them in for 30% fewer hours

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8lackJack8lack t1_ivsm8ns wrote

Tell that to the bosses in charge and watch them snicker and laugh.

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[deleted] t1_ivs7yqb wrote

[deleted]

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8lackJack8lack t1_ivsc92o wrote

The narrative of this post/article is that automation/robots will eventually replace a large percentage of human workers.

There won't be just another different job.

Companies racing to replace humans with automation to reduce costs (increase short term profits) are forgetting that their business also creates an income for the people they once employed.

A portion of that income spent at various businesses.

Automation is a race to self destruction.

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emelrad12 t1_ivsoon3 wrote

That is true for companies that employ 100% of the entire workforce which is no one. For individual companies it is always the right choice to replace workers.

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Studiousskittle t1_ivubuwl wrote

You do realize automation just makes most of the population useless. They will have plenty of time but zero wealth.

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bane5454 t1_ivuculy wrote

Yes, that’s why I posed this as a question, but the likely outcome is a modern version of surfdom/feudalism, kind of like what happened in the industrial revolution

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Wenuven t1_ivqnnye wrote

This was my thought. Assembly lines require a lot less humans than they did even 20 years ago.

AI CSR screening. HR portal tools. Financial planning / auditing software.

It all adds up but none of it would be "robots".

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NortWind t1_ivr45zu wrote

In agriculture, which used to be over 90% of the population, human labor is almost entirely replaced by machines.

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kyle4623 t1_ivrjzr6 wrote

John deer just revealed an automated tractor this year. Just think, buy the land, tractor and seed and it maintains itself!

We should embrace automation. Why delay the progress? We also need to do real work on social support systems. I'm not offering solutions but ignoring the bigger issue is the worst option.

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Scrumbled_Uggs t1_ivrrlaa wrote

Yeah but pushing for a lot of automation before implementing social/infrastructural systems that distribute the benefits of said automation to the people whose lives it would be affecting is a great way to bring about a full blown dystopia

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mastelsa t1_ivsh77m wrote

That's what happened during the industrial revolution and there were many worker revolts about it. I'm extremely pessimistic about our ability to learn from the past--we're going to go forward with automation and we can expect a lot of civil unrest and probably violence until we come out the other side either having settled on some solution like a UBI/vastly increased social safety nets, or having descended fully into corporate feudalism.

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bane5454 t1_ivt6n8u wrote

Scary how we came to the same conclusion that those are the only two real paths forward. I’d like to say that feudalism isn’t the more likely of the two, but I’d be lying

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Icarus367 t1_ivtddsm wrote

Except that even feudalism depends upon the serfs having work to do. What happens when the lord has no need of them because said work is being done by automation?

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who_you_are t1_ivqnnm5 wrote

Then I also wonder how many it created (if we normalize it).

I mean, you need peoples to design the pieces, to manufacturers them, to ship them, to repair them, ...

Yes I know it still locally remove job which can suck.

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AnOrdinary_Hippo t1_ivrjaxi wrote

Much less. If automation added total labor costs on top of the material cost of the robot we wouldn’t automate. You’d be paying more money to different people for the same thing.

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who_you_are t1_ivrl0h0 wrote

I mean for sure it is likely to be less. One employee 40h a week versus somebody once in a while...

I'm just curious with the number of hours in a robot life that need humans to work into.

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pipeguy07 t1_ivrb4xg wrote

Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.

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[deleted] t1_ivqmzap wrote

Where do we draw the line with that? The cotton gin? The grist mill?

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Mad_Aeric t1_ivrefqx wrote

Pretty much, yeah. The luddites were all about wrecking industrial looms and threshing machines back in the 1700s. The first clothing factory to use sewing machines was burned down in 1830. Hell, stockingers were taking issue with knitting frames all the way back in the 1500s for automating away their jobs.

Don't even get me started on grist mills. There's politics in there.

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[deleted] t1_ivrgh7t wrote

>Don't even get me started on grist mills. There's politics in there

I imagine Marx might be mentioned a time or two hahaha

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CitizenPremier t1_ivrprlk wrote

Restructuring the economic system to enforce the continuing benefit of all people rather than enrichment of the propertied class

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1337_w0n t1_ivreyws wrote

I wonder when we're starting the count. Does an autoloom count? What about a cotton gin or a tractor?

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CitizenPremier t1_ivroz0j wrote

I also wonder if they took into account how many people lost work rather than jobs. People working in call centers and factories are often technically working for another company and just basically get a call one day saying "Don't go to work today!" They wouldn't know why they lost their job, and technically, they wouldn't have lost their job (the staffing agency just stops paying them....).

Also it's not really clear in white collar contexts. Nobody gets told "well Steve's spreadsheet does your job now, we don't need you!" They just get a surprise desk cleaning meeting one day.

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Zerogates t1_ivref8g wrote

Thank you, this is the more accurate metric rather than "robots" for whatever the goal of this was.

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BaggyHairyNips t1_ivr2pdg wrote

I wonder how the number of jobs being lost now due to robots compares to those lost during the industrial revolution.

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AnOrdinary_Hippo t1_ivrjje5 wrote

Probably less but keep in mind western standards of living dropped to their lowest point during the industrial revolution. Personally I don’t want to deal with even a fraction of that.

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GrinderMonkey t1_ivut4r3 wrote

I came to say this. I was part of a tech support team where they had us write/log an extensive tech support trouble shooting tree. That diagnostic tool eventually made its way into an automated phone system, eliminating many reasonably paying jobs, and allowing others to be out sourced to cheaper labor. There were no technical robots involved.

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