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People Do Not Yearn for Automation

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Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#31

Post by SyneRyder »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #29
rogue7 wrote: post #16

Personally, it depends. If I could automate taking the trash out, I would do probably want to do it (not sure though). But what remains when everything is automated ? Well, so far we have been automating many things, and we are still busy working and living as always. It's of course impossible to automate everything - we always have things to do, by necessity by also by choice ; do we really want to be idle and contr…

> But what remains when everything is automated? The answer has been perfectly captured in this czechoslovakian cartoon made in 1984. https://youtu.be/6Mo8gQ89aEA?feature=shared

I shouldn't admit it, but when you described a czechoslovakian cartoon about automation, my first thought went straight to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#32

Post by [deleted] »

pxc wrote: post #22
fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

Labor-saving devices don't save labor at work. They increase productivity rather than reducing hours, and the extra value is captured by the employer. That's the difference between your home dishwasher and the means of production. It's also probably a big part of what worries Gen Z about when it comes to AI. They're thinking about their own employment and employment prospects, where most people probably understand th…

[deleted]

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#33

Post by pizzly »

I want to automate scientific research. There are too many problems, too much data and not enough scientists. We could find cures to cancer, rare genetic diseases, new forms of energy, better batteries, better every thing.

Take finding cures for cancer. You could automate finding the drug candidates, automate the manufacture of the experiment and preparing the drug candidates, automate the testing and automate the analysis on a massive scale. The limit won't be the number of scientists but physical barriers like energy and materials.

Automation has the potential to make us lead wonderful lives and we should not deny that from happening. The implementation matters though. There is going to be massive disruption to society and that needs to be handled carefully.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#34

Post by Legend2440 »

themafia wrote: post #18
fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

Then use AI to make a dishwasher. Why aim for accounting first? It's easy to get users. Speaking of accounting we should probably just measure profits.

Because robotics is really hard. Several companies are trying to make kitchen robots, but none of them are close to a viable product at the moment.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#35

Post by Legend2440 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #23
mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

I'd like to not die of Baumol's Cost Disease along the way, though.

Baumol's cost disease also benefits you, because it makes your wages go up even if you haven't increased productivity.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#36

Post by greedo »

Lutzb wrote: post #14
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #13

A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")

Working in IT and AI related fields I made the opposite observation. Taking as HR an example, professionals there wanted to keep the boring reporting tasks and automate the human part, e.g. career guidance, mediation etc.. At the time I could not understand the reason why. In hindsight it was a reward driven decision. Human to human interaction is rarely instantly rewarded. Producing reports on the other hand is meas…

This is compounded by many managers not understanding the details of what their direct reports actually do. I've had so many supervisors in my career who just have no concept of what I really do in IT, though it's pretty obvious to me and my coworkers. So when it comes to review time, I'm always having to walk them through what I actually do.

Contrast this to when I am tasked with creating a report that they need. They're amazed. Absolutely amazed that I can write something coherent. I can only assume that with the Peter Principle, they're all surrounded by idiots who write emails and reports like Epstein.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#37

Post by Rekindle8090 »

pxc wrote: post #22
fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

Labor-saving devices don't save labor at work. They increase productivity rather than reducing hours, and the extra value is captured by the employer. That's the difference between your home dishwasher and the means of production. It's also probably a big part of what worries Gen Z about when it comes to AI. They're thinking about their own employment and employment prospects, where most people probably understand th…

[dead]

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#38

Post by themafia »

Legend2440 wrote: post #34
themafia wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then use AI to make a dishwasher. Why aim for accounting first? It's easy to get users. Speaking of accounting we should probably just measure profits.

Because robotics is really hard. Several companies are trying to make kitchen robots, but none of them are close to a viable product at the moment.

It's amazing to me that people believe a company is easier to run than a robot. Several people try to start business every year, most of them fail. The lesson is right there.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#39

Post by _DeadFred_ »

ironmagma wrote: post #12
fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

Drudgery is not as much drudgery when there is variety. I think a lot of people who see their work as "drudgery" actually just are forced to do one thing and never even think about doing a second thing during their day.

The purpose/results of the work matter just as much. Take restaurant work. Making meals people enjoy is less drudgery. Making meals you know are good versus making low quality slop. Working at a basic but locally appreciated breakfast place versus making breakfasts at Denny's even though you are making basically the same thing.

Take making software I felt was making the world better versus software that was not. When I knew my work dramatically improved the lives of tens/hundreds of thousands of people and by extensions their families touched hundreds of thousands more versus just a software job in a kind of bad industry. The positive job it was easy to put in ridiculous hours. For the other straight 9-5 felt like too long.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#40

Post by [deleted] »

SyneRyder wrote: post #31
ArekDymalski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what remains when everything is automated? The answer has been perfectly captured in this czechoslovakian cartoon made in 1984. https://youtu.be/6Mo8gQ89aEA?feature=shared

I shouldn't admit it, but when you described a czechoslovakian cartoon about automation, my first thought went straight to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s

[deleted]
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