ExtraFun4319 t1_j6jk3xf wrote on January 30, 2023 at 8:02 PM

Reply to comment by imlaggingsobad in A McDonald’s location has opened in White Settlement, TX, that is almost entirely automated. Since it opened in December 2022, public opinion is mixed. Many are excited but many others are concerned about the impact this could have on millions of low-wage service workers. by Callitaloss

This restaurant isn't even close to being fully automated yet, so deriving that conclusion from this post strikes me as a bit odd.

I think those numbers might rise in the next few years (think somewhat less than Covid numbers at most), but I'm highly skeptical there'll be this unemployment crisis that you're describing at some point this decade.

AI and robotics has indeed made significant amounts of progress over the past few years (especially AI) the technology today is still nowhere near capable of performing the entirety of a large chunk of the workforce's jobs; fully replacing an employee's complete set of tasks is a much higher bar than merely augmenting the employee. And even the augmentation era has yet to fully get underway (although we're obviously seeing early signs of that with ChatGPT and the like).

And that's not even taking into consideration that mass adoption of new technology takes a good while and in many cases has to go through legal hurdles before being adopted at all.