Before the pandemic, I recall reading many articles on how burger flipping robots would put all the fast food workers out of the job. I imagined that they weren't widely deployed because of the cost compared to the cost of an average fast food worker. Now that hourly wages have gone up and I can assume the cost of the robots have gone down, why haven't we heard more robots deployed? Was it really just a scare tactic to depress wages or are they being used by not widely reported? When can I expect robots to take our jobs?
Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#2Have you been to McDonald's lately?
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#3It turned out it was harder than everyone thought? I keep waiting for the house building robot https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/hadrian-the-constru... but still waiting. I think it was musk who said (or words to this effect), it turns out people are very good at handling the odd things that happen that robots can't. This was after he said he could automate all the Tesla build.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#4Have you been to McDonald's lately?
Yes, only robot is a LCD touch screen that replaced the cashier. But what about the robot burger flipping machines. I have yet to see or hear any. Something like these:
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-27...
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#5I think it's happening, just more slowly than predicted. Mostly jobs in manufacturing have been lost: about a quarter of a million since 2000. A couple orders of magnitude more jobs are expected to be lost, but the future is obviously uncertain.
When reading statistics like this, though, it's important to ask two things:
1. If the report lists how many jobs were lost due to automation, does it also talk about how many were created due to automation? If 20k are lost one year, and 19k are created, the article may not mention the latter, though it is relevant. In one sense, only the delta is important.
2. But, in another sense, the delta isn't what we care about. New jobs created by automation is misleading too. Because, are the jobs created by automation better than the ones that were lost? Is it the same people who lost their manufacturing jobs who got the new jobs? Are those people happy about the trade?
My point is that it's a complicated situation that has been (and likely will be) commonly oversimplified.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#6Have you been to McDonald's lately?
Yes, only robot is a LCD touch screen that replaced the cashier. But what about the robot burger flipping machines. I have yet to see or hear any. Something like these: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-27...
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#7The same that happened to self driving car. Fogezy Fogazy.
The robot have not been deployed because they are not ready and do not exist.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#8It turned out it was harder than everyone thought? I keep waiting for the house building robot https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/hadrian-the-constru... but still waiting. I think it was musk who said (or words to this effect), it turns out people are very good at handling the odd things that happen that robots can't. This was after he said he could automate all the Tesla build.
I wonder if it's really about being hard, or just a matter of budget.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#9I think it's happening, just more slowly than predicted. Mostly jobs in manufacturing have been lost: about a quarter of a million since 2000. A couple orders of magnitude more jobs are expected to be lost, but the future is obviously uncertain. When reading statistics like this, though, it's important to ask two things: 1. If the report lists how many jobs were lost due to automation, does it also talk about how man…
Those jobs were not lost to automation bur to outsourcing due to cheap labor from china/east. The future is very simple. Without efficient supply chains, those jobs will return back to the US/Mexico.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to robots taking all our jobs?
#10It turned out it was harder than everyone thought? I keep waiting for the house building robot https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/hadrian-the-constru... but still waiting. I think it was musk who said (or words to this effect), it turns out people are very good at handling the odd things that happen that robots can't. This was after he said he could automate all the Tesla build.
I wonder if it's really about being hard, or just a matter of budget.
Tesla had a crazy budget, but they still couldn't automate everything