Funny that people didn't want the migrants because they took up job positions otherwise the pure English could've taken. Maybe they'll have to do a TechXit too?
Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
51–60 of 88 posts
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#52Considering many people who design and develop the tech for robots in the UK are migrants, i don't think this strategy will fare particularly well
The article names several non UK companies as suppliers of the technology. They shouldn't have much trouble getting visas for their installation teams.
I think the really interesting point was that UK firms lag behind other countries in automation precisely because low skilled human labour is fairly cheap here.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#53The tech necessary to replace front line service workers is not there. If it was we'd all be buying one to use as a domestic servant/slave. The robots in the article are more assembly line types, what happens when someone spills a coffee in some place 'unexpected', customer wants a custom frappadappalappachino instead of the regular drink, or something needs to be moved out of reach some customer needs help in a mill…
You can replace 5 out of 6, probably. Leave 1 as a customer service agent, and they handle all the special cases.
This is how one local grocery store does self checkout. One attendant for about 10 machines, only a few people working the classic checkouts.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can replace 5 out of 6, probably. Leave 1 as a customer service agent, and they handle all the special cases.
See Kellogg's Stretford cereal factory in the BBC Documentary Inside the Factory ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mddvr ), four people plus a fleet of roughly 30-50 robotic fork lift trucks manage all the product egress. Personally, I welcome this, but it has to go hand in hand with some sort of universal income. We need to give everyone the chance to pick the job they /want/ to do, rather than the job they feel,…
> The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- Warren Bennis
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education, so that they could get one of those jobs which will be moved back to the EU now.
> one of those jobs which will be moved back to the EU now Can you cite any examples of a job that moved /from/ the EU to the UK, and which will now /move back/?
A good example is any IT related project that needs to obey EU data protection laws.
With UK out of EU, those servers need to be on EU country, unless they do some data agreement.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#56To be honest, a lot more robots could be used if locations were designed for them in the first place. I'm not exactly expecting to see my bartender get replaced by a humanoid robot, as seen in Passengers, anytime soon. Instead I expect more to follow the McDonalds route; changing the entire food ordering flow by having touch screen displays dotted around the restaurant, where you can quickly tap in an order.
Or extra BIG ASS FRIES... (Carl's Jr from Idiocracy) ObOnTopic: Cashiers are doing a very automatable job.. Like, it's done already to good effect. And if you do like our Krogers does at night, you dont have a choice to not use automation. The harder thing is mechanics and QC for food production. But with cheaper motors and actuators, makes more complicated food automation cheaper, easier, and higher quality than hum…
Cashiers are not automate-able yet, at least not with current product design. Yes, yes I know there's that Amazon store and some other test store that tags every one of its products with RFID tags, but the self-checkout isn't automated, it's just making the customer be their own cashier.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#57The tech necessary to replace front line service workers is not there. If it was we'd all be buying one to use as a domestic servant/slave. The robots in the article are more assembly line types, what happens when someone spills a coffee in some place 'unexpected', customer wants a custom frappadappalappachino instead of the regular drink, or something needs to be moved out of reach some customer needs help in a mill…
I agree that things won't change enough in service jobs to matter by 2019. But as to this: > The tech necessary to replace front line service workers is not there. If it was we'd all be buying one ... what happens when ... some customer needs help in unexpected ways History does tell us that sometimes the market will throw away jobs that are becoming inconvenient to society, even if that means doing without the servi…
> Now imagine a Starbucks with touchscreen-and-voice enabled ordering, no visible employees (maybe one employee, nominally a store manager, working the fleet of coffee machines behind the screens, and doing some light sweeping in the restaurant, etc) and a communal co-working space that more or less preserves the current experience, just minus the baristas.
We are already almost there. We have coffee vending machines. We have touch screen soda dispensers. Starbucks could wire in their mobile app to give customers a "redbox" coffee experience if they wanted to. I think it's part of their brand that a barista hand crafts your beverage rather than a machine do it, but who knows what their future direction will be.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that things won't change enough in service jobs to matter by 2019. But as to this: > The tech necessary to replace front line service workers is not there. If it was we'd all be buying one ... what happens when ... some customer needs help in unexpected ways History does tell us that sometimes the market will throw away jobs that are becoming inconvenient to society, even if that means doing without the servi…
> Now imagine a Starbucks with touchscreen-and-voice enabled ordering, no visible employees (maybe one employee, nominally a store manager, working the fleet of coffee machines behind the screens, and doing some light sweeping in the restaurant, etc) and a communal co-working space that more or less preserves the current experience, just minus the baristas. We are already almost there. We have coffee vending machines…
The state of the art for self-serve is low right now; it's like comparing a servant to a hand-cranked washing machine (current coffee vending machine experience). But if you compare to modern models that go quietly to work and have affordances like locking/unlocking on touch and projecting green or red dots on the floor to let you know if they're done washing, preferences will change.
Currently, companies that make people self-serve with touchscreens in restaurants or grocery stores are most commonly giving them a hostile (even hateful) user experience. But as voice UI starts to be more common, and you can marry visual and voice ...
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#59The tech necessary to replace front line service workers is not there. If it was we'd all be buying one to use as a domestic servant/slave. The robots in the article are more assembly line types, what happens when someone spills a coffee in some place 'unexpected', customer wants a custom frappadappalappachino instead of the regular drink, or something needs to be moved out of reach some customer needs help in a mill…
> customer wants a custom frappadappalappachino instead of the regular drink
Actually, I think that's something that would be relatively easily to automate. I've seen computerized ordering kiosks in European fast food restaurants. If you already have the robot, all you'd need to do is add a custom-item builder to the ordering interface. If the customer has a loyalty card or account, they could built it offline and save the item to their account for later retrieval.
Assembling a liquid product seems like it'd be much easier to automate than cooking or general cleaning tasks. Overall, though, your point still stands.
Re: Brexit Britain Could Replace Migrants with Robots
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education, so that they could get one of those jobs which will be moved back to the EU now.
> one of those jobs which will be moved back to the EU now Can you cite any examples of a job that moved /from/ the EU to the UK, and which will now /move back/?
Medicines agency is a fairly fresh example[0]
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/6d543d2a-eddd-11e6-ba01-119a44939...