Automation: What do you think?

pangbang · 23-06-2017 01:36AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

Is "common sense" just what you believe to be true. And you hardly write short posts yourself.

Common sense = throwing an apple into the air and, through rational, intuitive and learned reasoning, expect it to fall back down.

I don't need a diagram or a file to tell me that.

Can you not think on your own, has the cumulative knowledge you have gained over your lifetime amounted to nothing, you cant make educated guesses, or engage "common sense"?

You'll find that common sense, most of the time, leads you to the right answer in the end, generally. The exceptions are surprises by definition.

Yourself isit · 23-06-2017 01:42AM

pangbang wrote: »

I could go digging on the internet for proof of what I say. But I can honestly tell you that I'm not going to.

I have read many credible resources that back up what I stated. Now if youre inclined to go looking, then good. If not, well then believe what you want.

I'm not inclined to go looking. Link or explain your own arguments. (And that's hilarious because you just criticised a guy for linking something you disagreed with. )

About software engineers being replaced or not....why wouldn't they be replaced? Again, if you go looking, you'll find quite a bit about writing programme to automate writing programme. Its not some magical science, its mostly iterative code with slight alteration, so although you'll need the intuitiveness of a person to make those alterations, you wont need the guts of the workforce today.

.
Code that writes code isn't very useful except in very very trivial cases. Anything difficult involves humans.

Think about the point of automation. It is to make money, increase profit. Why would you not put considerable effort into replacing the only people that your system relies upon?

An example. A car manufacturer, it would be your first instinct back in the day that theres no way they will get rid of the people who build the product. And that instead the company would concentrate on getting their cars into every aspect of society. But the reality is that they did both at once.

What better business than the one that controls everything, and relies on nothing but itself? Its the very heart of automation.

Nobody doubts automation in factories. It's the replacing doctors, accountants, software engineers that is doubtful.

Yourself isit · 23-06-2017 01:45AM

pangbang wrote: »

Common sense = throwing an apple into the air and, through rational, intuitive and learned reasoning, expect it to fall back down.

I don't need a diagram or a file to tell me that.

Can you not think on your own, has the cumulative knowledge you have gained over your lifetime amounted to nothing, you cant make educated guesses, or engage "common sense"?

I can definitely think on my own. I find that I disagree with you though.

You'll find that common sense, most of the time, leads you to the right answer in the end, generally. The exceptions are surprises by definition.

You'll find if you want to debate you need to make and justify your arguments rather than an appeal to "common sense" which just happens to be your beliefs.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 23-06-2017 01:49AM

'A computer took your place, daddy..'

beauf · 23-06-2017 01:56AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

...Code that writes code isn't very useful except in very very trivial cases. Anything difficult involves humans....

Every webpage you look at is code rewriting code.

Send In The Robots · 23-06-2017 01:57AM

Resistance is futile. Welcome to the Revolution (4th Industrial).

pangbang · 23-06-2017 02:00AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

I'm not inclined to go looking. Link or explain your own arguments. (And that's hilarious because you just criticised a guy for linking something you disagreed with. )

.
Code that writes code isn't very useful except in very very trivial cases. Anything difficult involves humans.

Nobody doubts automation in factories. It's the replacing doctors, accountants, software engineers that is doubtful.[/QUOTE]

No, I didn't criticise him for providing a link. He was answering a question I didn't ask, and I pointed that out.

The problem I have with the whole thing, why I started the thread at all, is precisely BECAUSE of the stereotype that its manual/retail work that will be affected and everything else is gravy.

Because that belief isn't true. Look into it, or don't. But either way its better to at least have people thinking about it as opposed to walking into it blindly.

Money talks, and it is the sole reason for all of this. Less employees, no matter if you are a waitress or an architect, means more money for the investors/owners. People come second, and these companies/entities are gunning for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do. Some are just ahead of the game, but the others will catch up.

Its that spiralling nature of capitalism/market driven economics. You have one company that manages to replace a big chunk of their staff, thereby increasing profit and reducing expenditure into the future. A competitor company, meanwhile, tries to hold on to their staff, but is put out of business eventually because they cant compete with the automated one.

Its only going to go one direction.

Send In The Robots · 23-06-2017 02:10AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

Nobody doubts automation in factories. It's the replacing doctors, accountants, software engineers that is doubtful.

Some articles think they are very much at risk, the 5 Jobs Robots Will Take First...

1 – Middle Management
2 – Commodity Salespeople (Ad Sales, Supplies, etc.)
3 – Report Writers, Journalists, Authors and Announcers
4 – Accountants and Bookkeepers
5 – Doctors

But think there are some that will be taken before then, particularly in the service sector: food service, hospitality and travel. Essentially, every job is at risk, with little or no exceptions.

pangbang · 23-06-2017 02:11AM

Yourself isit wrote: »

I can definitely think on my own. I find that I disagree with you though.

You'll find if you want to debate you need to make and justify your arguments rather than an appeal to "common sense" which just happens to be your beliefs.

Well then I'll try to sum up my common sense approach here then.

Automation = money and lots of it. I think common sense says that a lot of human activity can be automated. Legal issues can be automated, they are just a set of rules and regulations. Common health diagnosis can be attributed to a specific set of symptoms, and can easily be automated. Accounting is mainly basic mathematics, which can be automated. I think that a software company, in particular, would want to automate software as a priority. Exceptions are basically the intuitive parts that people provide, and the vast majority of jobs, in my opinion, do not require intuition.

Whatever you do for a job, can you honestly say that its different every single day? That you cant break it down to a few tweaked, repeated processes? Even if not you, what about the average person?

Theres my common sense argument in a nutshell. The motivation is there, the means are practically there. So that's how I come to my common sense conclusion.

I don't need to link to files or websites that I have already read to state something that I consider common sense.

Easy to summarise on my side.

Now, where is your common sense to say the opposite? I don't need files or websites.

ChikiChiki · 23-06-2017 07:44AM

I've worked on a few automation projects. The same question asked by strategic management all the time is "How many FTE's will be saved?" and a big part of the decisioning is based on that.

It wont end well for the run of the mill worker and people need to be more informed its coming so theybcan begin to re train.

Mr. teddywinkles · 23-06-2017 07:52AM

captbarnacles wrote: »

Working conditions will deteriorate rapidly with increased working times and less pay to try and keep profitability on par with automation. European workers will refuse and companies will relocate manufacturing to Indian sweatshops etc or anywhere there is less workers rights.

And who will buy their products . The poorly paid people in India. A bit of a catch 22 there. I don't think these companies see the bigger picture only more profit.

Mr. teddywinkles · 23-06-2017 07:55AM

ChikiChiki wrote: »

I've worked on a few automation projects. The same question asked by strategic management all the time is "How many FTE's will be saved?" and a big part of the decisioning is based on that.

It wont end well for the run of the mill worker and people need to be more informed its coming so theybcan begin to re train.

So say loads of people train as engineers for these automation systems. Does that not diminish the relevance of that job for example. How many engineers do you need?

Fourier · 23-06-2017 08:19AM

beauf wrote: »

Every webpage you look at is code rewriting code.

No it isn't, the web server delivers human written HTML, CSS and Javascript. Any editing of the HTML and CSS is done by human written server side code.

The only way you would have code writing code would be if the server wrote useful javascript, but that doesn't happen.

Fourier · 23-06-2017 08:24AM

pangbang wrote: »

Common sense = throwing an apple into the air and, through rational, intuitive and learned reasoning, expect it to fall back down.

I don't need a diagram or a file to tell me that.

Yes you don't need a "file" to tell you an apple will fall down, but you need something more than your personal common sense to convincingly talk about long term trends in automation and employment.

23-06-2017 08:32AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's one of those examples of how our society is f*cked up by in-the-box thinking. Automation should be good for quality of life, as it makes everything cheaper and drastically lowers the amount of time people need to spend working. But in order to fulfil it as a good thing, the current model of capitalism is going to have to go. Things like universal basic income and higher taxes for corporations across the board will have to come into play. On the other hand, automation will facilitate a lot of government work as well, ergo public spending won't have to be nearly as high as it is now - imagine for instance if a supercomputer working with a bunch of robots could design and construct a block of public flats in half the time it takes for humans to do so? Government capital spending immediately plunges. Supposing computers get perfectly good at accounting, managing etc? Great, the corporate bloat in the HSE disappears overnight.

This can be a good thing for society - we can potentially end up with an end game in which people have a lot more free time - but we're going to have to tackle the issue of distributing the spoils fairly so that everyone can benefit, and that won't happen as long as the neoliberalism of Reagan / Thatcher is the prevailing ideology governing Western politics.

Mostly agree with all that. The whole "selling" of technology is to make life easier, get rid of boring, hard, back-breaking, monotonous tasks. Realistically we should be close to a standard 4-day week at this stage along with basic income etc.

23-06-2017 08:37AM

lots of website templates available to just choose from, lots of IT companies sell systems (databases with front ends) with pre built reporting and also with easy tools to build your own reports. So coding jobs are definitely disappearing. Even looking at more recent versions of SQL studio manager with older ones there is a big difference. Now you can drag and drop to create joins between tables. studio manager then automates the code to represent what you just did.

ChikiChiki wrote: »

I've worked on a few automation projects. The same question asked by strategic management all the time is "How many FTE's will be saved?" and a big part of the decisioning is based on that.

It wont end well for the run of the mill worker and people need to be more informed its coming so theybcan begin to re train.

I do alot of automation/coding and the amount of data entry and reporting that can be automated is insane. I see job losses everywhere I look! The most random things can be automated

Take a look at this, sure its a bit slow but its an old video and it will only speed up and improve, imagine ten faster & better ones going at the same time

How about this stuff (far less green keepers, farmers, council workers or whoever cutting grass/baling hay etc etc).

beauf · 23-06-2017 11:45AM

Fourier wrote: »

No it isn't, the web server delivers human written HTML, CSS and Javascript. Any editing of the HTML and CSS is done by human written server side code.

The only way you would have code writing code would be if the server wrote useful javascript, but that doesn't happen.

Most people are using tools, template, and IDEs to create the web page or server side code. But the page is rendered on the fly. That abstraction is just moving up the food chain. or stack.

Years ago we would have hand coded the HTML etc, if anyone remembers using tables for layouts, shudder... and before CSS.

Its why theres less demand for lower end IT skillset and an increasing demand for higher end skillsets.

I've worked on a lot very basic automation, across a range of industries, and its literally takes a couple hours out of some people working day. Most people are happy about it, because it removes mainly the repetitive boring work, or makes it easier to meet short time deadlines.

citytillidie · 23-06-2017 11:52AM

I would not use the self service machines in the super markets would rather go to a person to pay.

Never in McDonalds so no idea what there automatic thing is

23-06-2017 12:02PM

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Tried a kiosk in Maccas and it was the most unintuitive piece of crap ever. Like I'm not a retard around tech but it was so badly designed however that's a software issue not an issue as such with automation.

I used one a few days go. Tapped my card and the machine immediately blue screened and rebooted itself. So I had to go up to the counter anyway.

eeguy · 23-06-2017 12:12PM

Mr. teddywinkles wrote: »

And who will buy their products .

Nobody cares about that right now. By the time they do care it'll be too late.

Take a look at farming. Everything will soon be automated. You can buy sheep shearers, cow milkers, automated tractors, planters, harvesters.
You can buy drones to monitor crops. You can use satellites to monitor long term land use.
Soon enough you'll be running a farm from a laptop.

Take a look at retail. When Amazon perfects Go, there won't be checkouts. Probably robots stocking the shelves. And who even needs a shop when Tesco and the like deliver to your door.
And who needs people manufacturing when automated systems are quicker and more accurate.

And who need drivers when automated cars are safer and more convenient. Tesla will have fully autonomous car in 2 years (apparently)
Tesla are also planning autonomous haulage.

jester77 · 23-06-2017 12:13PM

I like these kiosks. My local McD's has them. Very easy to select what you want, tap card to pay with NFC, get receipt with number and you wait until your number appears on the screen. Much faster than how it used to be and it eliminates the congestion around the counter.

Certain jobs get replaced by other jobs. Lots of jobs no longer exist because of advancements. There were plenty of blacksmiths around where I used to live as a kid. Only know 1 now.

People just adapt and learn new skills. There will be jobs created manufacturing, installing and maintaining these kiosks. There will be jobs designing, implementing, testing and deploying the software for them. It's called progress and has been like that for centuries.

Maximus Alexander · 23-06-2017 12:14PM

beauf wrote: »

I don't think you realise that a lot of manual work in IT is increasingly automated.

I've found that the more automation we add in our firm, the bigger our IT department gets.

wes · 23-06-2017 12:16PM

The first huge disruption due to automation, will be around self driving cars, which depending on how long it takes to change laws, we will probably see in the next 10-20 years.

Think about all the people who drive for a living e.g. delivery people, taxi drivers etc, who will all lose there jobs. Governments world wide need to think how best to handle it and start thinking of solutions.

eeguy · 23-06-2017 12:22PM

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

I've found that the more automation we add in our firm, the bigger our IT department gets.

The smaller other depts get?
In 2004 Blockbuster had 86k employees and made 6 billion a year.
In 2016 Netflix had 4,500 employees and made 9 billion.

Worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk

beauf · 23-06-2017 12:32PM

wes wrote: »

The first huge disruption due to automation, will be around self driving cars, which depending on how long it takes to change laws, we will probably see in the next 10-20 years.

Think about all the people who drive for a living e.g. delivery people, taxi drivers etc, who will all lose there jobs. Governments world wide need to think how best to handle it and start thinking of solutions.

I think we will be a will before we see unmanned vehicles. The person might not be driving but they will be supervising for some time yet.

Driving in the city is such a pain now. I can't wait.

CrankyHaus · 23-06-2017 12:37PM

While the coming wave of automation may be somewhat unique history provides the only precedent. Historically automation has displaced jobs while increasing productivity, wealth and living standards enormously. Who would want to return to a pre-industrial world where the vast majority are subsistence farmers?

The only profession to disappear from the US in the last 50 years due to automation is elevator-operator. The amount of tellers employed actually rose following the introduction of ATMs.

The real question is how best to handle automation. I agree our political, economic and cultural systems are poorly prepared for it.

It may take longer than people think though. A lot of the current hype around automation is basically marketing from an overheated global tech sector with a huge amount of cheap money chasing the next big thing. A bursting of the tech bubble could easily set it back significantly. Add in how long advanced technology takes to be widely adapted and to work as intended and we may see a far longer adjustment period than you'd think.

While automation poses huge challenges a lot of the media coverage of the issue is sensationalist nonsense playing on the fears of readers.
Most journalists lack the inclination or ability to rationally assess a hugely complex issue with few certainties so they just resort to saying we'll all lose our jobs to robots because fear sells.

The media was doing a very similar thing with off-shoring about 10 years ago. I remember the Economist seemed to have an article every week about how a new firm in India had lawyers/engineers/teachers on 1c/hr offering their services in the UK to play on fears that the model would have every middle class professional in the west on the breadline. What actually happened was far more nuanced and complex.

topper75 · 23-06-2017 12:42PM

pangbang wrote: »

Its sad watching the workers trying to show you how to use the new systems, literally being forced to give away their own employment.

Don't feel sad for THEM. They get to go on the dole, stay up late at night, eat roasted peanuts, and learn sax.

It's the neighbours listening to the faltering notes of the early learner in the flat upstairs that deserve your sympathy.

ChikiChiki · 23-06-2017 01:02PM

Mr. teddywinkles wrote: »

So say loads of people train as engineers for these automation systems. Does that not diminish the relevance of that job for example. How many engineers do you need?

Depends on the job to be honest. If people think they can squeeze another 10-15 years out of data entry, they're deluded. That goes for accountants and administrators.

But I agree with your point, a different type of skillset will be required. Software engineers, testers etc to keep the automated systems running.

Send In The Robots · 23-06-2017 02:04PM

Bear in mind, along with job losses there will be some job gains particular in green engineering, innovation, human lesuire interfacing*, and as mentioned robot servicing.

* that means complex human recreation activites such as e.g. windsurfing instruction which a robot could not do within 30yrs, due to very very complex balancing and the water/under-water environment.

The other (more adult) human interfacing leusire industry, will of course be more easily and quickly replaced by the robots.

Maximus Alexander · 23-06-2017 02:14PM

Username checks out.

Automation: What do you think?

Comments