I'm disappointed by my and others ability or lack of ability in automating.
The humble takeaway is that it is far more difficult than people imagine.
No Recent Automation Revolution
51–60 of 368 posts
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#521999-2019 is not the interesting period of automation. I'm surprised the authors think it's even relevant. 2020-2040 will be the period to watch.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#53Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program. We did in months what we had originally planned to do in years. As we are able to open our operations center further, it's clear that we'll be providing fewer jobs than we did before. At least some part of that is the result of automation. I can't help but think this same pattern is playing out at other companies right now.
And how many restaurants now have online ordering who would never have had online ordering without being forced to?
However, even before Covid, McDonald's was rolling out touchscreen kiosk and app ordering. So, there has definitely been automation in that sector.
The paper is ... kinda odd ... because its methodology considers machine operators (injection molding machine operators, lathe and machining center operators, etc.) to be some of the most automatable. That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines.
Yeah, 20 hours of training got me to the point I can run a CNC mill. However, I wouldn't say I'm good at it. I touch off incorrectly probably 1 in 20 times--which likely blows a part and breaks an end mill. I sometimes don't leave enough clearance to the vice jaws--which certainly breaks a mill and possible damages the machine itself.
I think it was NYC CNC on YouTube that had a whole video of the various fails he's had with CNC milling machines over time. Anyone who has used a CNC cringes at that video because we have all done exactly the same things.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#54There's no technical or physical limit to why so many things can't be automated, which means everything that can, will be automated eventually.. Super popular games like Factorio and Satisfactory are glimpses of a potential near future.
There is an economic limit. If the cost of the machine is more than the human then your competitors will use humans and you’ll loose a ton of money on every product you sell. Of course that doesn’t matter because there is no technical limit on the value of your stock so as long as you are the golden boy it doesn’t matter
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also in the customer service segment, we continue to accelerate the move to wipe out fast food jobs. Four million people work in fast food restaurants in the US. I'll be surprised if around 1/4 to 1/3 of those jobs don't vanish this decade. That is part of the automation revolution and it is underway. Just the process of automating ordering at fast food restaurants as we already easily can, will remove several hundre…
The sceptic in me wonders how much capital the fast food industry is willing to invest to replace cheap labor. I'm not really arguing with you just reflecting on my own experiences with current start of the art tech. "Did you say at fries to that?" No "Added 27 orders of fries, anything else" Arghhhh!
w/ touch screen you don't need to 'speak' unless maybe blind or something... So, you could be more accurate.. I mean I ALWAYS use mobile ordering now when going through drive through. I'll pull over, sit for a moment, place my order, then get in line.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#56I'm disappointed by my and others ability or lack of ability in automating. The humble takeaway is that it is far more difficult than people imagine.
There are probably only a couple thousand people in the would that could write the appropriate code or make robots perfect enough to do many of the automated manufacturing tasks. And most of them are employed by places that mostly waste their talents
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fear is very real, not about emasculation, but a loss of identity in a society where "you are your job". I have seen this first hand in both people who weren't "essential" during COVID shutdowns (to their horror), and people who were deemed "essential" but it was, in their words, "bullshit". Automation is rapidly accelerating into the wall that is identity beliefs at scale, and there is evidence that these belief…
> The revolution won't be the automation. It'll be in us accepting that the job wasn't who we were/are and it's okay to let it go This is perhaps the only thing socialism got right. At least the flavor we had in Yugoslavia and the remnants it left on the psyche of my parent's generation. You do your job, then you go home and live your actual life. The job exists as a way to "pay your dues" in society, but it isn't yo…
The error is universalism. Neither mindset you're describing is appropriate to be given a universal "should" status, people have differing preferences. Some rather enjoy having their work be a big part if not the primary part of their life. Plus there are many nice things which benefit everyone that wouldn't exist if the people who brought them about had just treated their jobs as jobs. Maybe some think those things shouldn't exist, but you'll never convince the creators of that.
Where America still shines is you can for the most part still go with either mindset as you prefer. Even in SV tech where there's so much "dream job" this and other such talk, BigCos are nevertheless packed full of employees for whom it's just a job. But there are the occasional rather devoted employees who put in much more than 40 hours (not to mention the fudgey to account for time where you're thinking about work topics in the shower, at dinner, before bed...) and that's fine, it can make a nice mix. Now if you start down the socialist path of promoting a universal policy, and there are many (like limiting work hours) that could support making things easier for the just-a-job mentality, what you're actually doing is eliminating an option people prefer, and a huge source of innovation along with it.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#58Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program. We did in months what we had originally planned to do in years. As we are able to open our operations center further, it's clear that we'll be providing fewer jobs than we did before. At least some part of that is the result of automation. I can't help but think this same pattern is playing out at other companies right now.
This kind of thing happens all the time; a crisis in economic terms forcing companies to aggressively pursue cost savings measures that never go away once the economic constraints are lifted. A similar process happened with oil rigs, where automation was available, but only pursued once the price of oil crashed. Those jobs also never came back.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fear is very real, not about emasculation, but a loss of identity in a society where "you are your job". I have seen this first hand in both people who weren't "essential" during COVID shutdowns (to their horror), and people who were deemed "essential" but it was, in their words, "bullshit". Automation is rapidly accelerating into the wall that is identity beliefs at scale, and there is evidence that these belief…
> The revolution won't be the automation. It'll be in us accepting that the job wasn't who we were/are and it's okay to let it go This is perhaps the only thing socialism got right. At least the flavor we had in Yugoslavia and the remnants it left on the psyche of my parent's generation. You do your job, then you go home and live your actual life. The job exists as a way to "pay your dues" in society, but it isn't yo…
In modern America we used to have that, but non-job social structures have been hollowed out since the 1970s. Now Americans get a distressingly large percentage of their social interactions via work, making them psychologically dependent on their job too.
Re: No Recent Automation Revolution
#60The post implies that the authors' paper has received limited attention from the economic establishment due to its heterodox conclusion, but elides any supposition as to why its heterodoxy should be so controversial. Why should it be?
Surely unrelated to the author's referring to (his quotes) "experts" and their (my quotes) "bullshit."
My takeaway: invest in rock delivery. Everyone wants to live under one. And what with COVID-19, not enough people will be able to scavenge their own.