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In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

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Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's a negative to society but only if all of society was run by slave owners. In any other case the slave owner would have a benefit over the non slave owner when it came to cost of production.

It's both hilarious and excellent to watch both of you try to justify the utility of human labour.

I'm not sure what you mean. Human labour has utility, that why we work.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#52
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know why? Supermarkets everywhere have self-serve checkouts and they seem to be successful. What skill was needed at your local shop that the self-service checkouts didn't have? Was it preventing theft? Identifying produce?

Just some anecdata, but personally I hate dealing with self-checkout when buying fruits/veggies/buns/bread and other non-barcoded items. Cashiers are so much faster than me to deal with that. Maybe the shop in question have a lot of non-barcode items and it causes serious delay.

If you're in the US, your fruits and veg almost certainly have little stickers on them. Those stickers contain four- or five-digit numbers which, if entered into a register or a kiosk, identify the produce and save the time of navigating an icon menu to do so.

The kiosks at all the grocery stores where I've used them have offered the option of entering item codes, so it's a fair bet yours do too; if so, give it a try, and see if it doesn't save you considerable time.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#53
post #39

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

At least until the robots rebel. The EU is already planning on giving robots rights. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/12/give-robo...

Why rebel? Robots are effectively immortal. Why not just coddle us and give in to our every whim until we stop breeding and disappear? Couldn't take more than a few hundred years or so. Looking at the lifespan of MI, it's rounding error.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#54
post #36
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they will be able to provide better and faster service. On the contrary, my local grocery store took out their self-serve checkout kiosks and replaced them with human checkers. Turns out there was some skill involved after all.

Most Self Service Kiosks in stores are not designed for User Experience or Efficiency in mind, that is way the fail They are designed with Loss Prevention in mind, so they end up treating every customer that walks up to them as a criminal looking to steal something. This is one of the reason I still use a human checker when I go to the grocery, it is far more efficient and takes less time than the Self Checkout. Now…

I guess it depends on where the Self Service Kiosks have been deployed - I can Scan, Bag, Pay, leave in Concur - if I have a cart, probably would use a checkout person - but, when you get used to buying stuff from the store 1-2x a day, you rarely have a large load.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#55
post #40
post #32

Sooner or later, the robots and AI will be able to provide 100% of humanity material needs. AND The very nature of each societies will be shuffled by that new reality. When every material need is fulfilled, a lot of questions arise: 1- What's the essence of private property when the working robots can already fulfill all the needs of the humanity ? 2- What's the essence of political power where nobody feels anymore t…

There is a really good short novel Manna [1] that explore two models of Post robotic world. 1. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

"Really good"? I found it amateurish in its style, questionable in its priors, and far from compelling in its conclusions, being neither enjoyable to read nor worthwhile to have read.

One man's opinion, of course, and worth only what you paid for it, but even among the already questionable field of futurism, the very kindest that can be said of this effort is that it fails to stand out.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both hilarious and excellent to watch both of you try to justify the utility of human labour.

I'm not sure what you mean. Human labour has utility, that why we work.

From a certain perspective human labour is the most perfect waste of time. But keep going.

As long as you keep it up I'll pretend I want to keep working.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#57
post #27

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

With capital becoming self-sufficient and human labour non-competitive, why would you think robots would serve us on a large scale? What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? Automation is destroying the only power that people still had over capital. Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Edit:…

History. The French Revolution speaks of what happens when the populace at large decides that the situation cannot continue. Of course what would history remember of them had they lost?

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#58

"If it takes $2,000 to install what is basically an iPad and stand for customers to order from at McDonald’s or Chipotle, a restaurateur is looking at less than a month before recouping their entire investment if they eliminate just one cashier position." Obviously it takes a little bit more than that. You need to develop the software that runs on the kiosk. You also need a back-end system so the kitchen knows what t…

Please, use NFC to push my order blob up to my private storage device, so that next time I visit I can tap my phone and /send/ the order back in to the system. So much the better if it's json or xml and editable offline. (Obviously validate either way...)

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Self Service Kiosks in stores are not designed for User Experience or Efficiency in mind, that is way the fail They are designed with Loss Prevention in mind, so they end up treating every customer that walks up to them as a criminal looking to steal something. This is one of the reason I still use a human checker when I go to the grocery, it is far more efficient and takes less time than the Self Checkout. Now…

The UK has had the "check out as you shop" systems for a while in most major supermarkets. They work very well.

Indeed. When I was living near one, I could walk in, fill my own backpack with stuff, pay in a few seconds and walk out. Another advantage is that I could see that discounts had processed properly, instead of having to check the receipt.

But once I moved away, I started using home delivery and it's even better. My shopping now consists of ~15mins browsing a website, and ~15mins receiving and unpacking bags, and I only need to do it about once a fortnight.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean. Human labour has utility, that why we work.

From a certain perspective human labour is the most perfect waste of time. But keep going. As long as you keep it up I'll pretend I want to keep working.

Is that "certain perspective" interesting? Nobody wants to work that's a given that doesn't need to be argued, whence work needs incentives (in a generalised sense) from salary to force.

Most human labour has historically related to food production, production and maintainance of dwellings, sanitation, health, care of the young & elderly, and security (from animals, natural forces, other humans). Since division of labour became possible additional forms of labour emerged, such as science, engineering, and organisation of labour whose raison d'être is to lighten humanity's workload. One can and should certainly ask if work could be organised better, but there is a base load of things that need to be done to perpetuate humanity.

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