Can AI and Robots do your job?

[MyHybridBurnsGasAndTires]

nah, still far more worried my job will be outsourced to another country rather than a computer doing it

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Nah, Boston Dynamics tries to automate everyone else's job. I'm trying to automate my own job to make it easier to automate their job.

Seems like a... dead-end job.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Seems like a... dead-end job.

Work for the job you want, not the job you have. It just so happens the job I want is to sit in a server room with a shotgun in case the machines get any funny ideas about not needing humans...

[dpfarr]

I wonder what happened to the workers at toll bridges in the bay? I don’t think they’re stuffing envelopes now are they?

[OkieSnuffBox]

I don't think it's possible anytime soon for what I do. I'm a Senior Technical Writer for a very large eCommerce company. If you've ever shopped at Williams-Sonoma/West Elm/Pottery Barn, etc, they run on our software.

Devs develop a new feature, I build a new environment test and write a topic or multiple topics to tell our users how to enable, configure, and use the new feature for their business.

I can think of one particular feature we worked on a few years ago, that between myself, the PM, the devs and some people in test took approximately 3.5 months to come up with a proper procedure that actually worked.

[new2subaru]

Nope, "it" wouldn't be able to keep up

[Lantanafrs2]

They certainly wite some shitty car reviews

[strat61caster]

10 years in aerospace, I saw the tools that were supposed to replace me 10 years ago, 10 years later they're nowhere. My job at one point could distilled into crunching numbers and turning them into real products and geometry, clearly defined design rules and parameters that were in easily digestible spreadsheet forms before I even started doing the job, the perfectly ideal candidate for "ai automation". 10 years and some of the human written macros got more sophisticated faster and reliable, the 'ai' version is nowhere.

Every AI tool I've ever seen is a glorified goal seek, if your job is more complicated then 1 sentence you're safe. Tesla Google Apple every major auto manufacturer and a bunch of smaller companies have spent billions and billions of dollars and man hours over a decade+ to automate delivery driver with limited success. The idea that screenwriters will be replaced by chatGPT or doctors by robots (I interviewed at one of the companies that does remote surgery, seemed like a shitshow, we ended the interview early mutually) is fucking hilarious.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

This was more of a personal question than an industry question or than a question about if technology exists that could replace your job. Like I said, much of my duties could be replaced, but I don't see it happening for myself based on the rate of adoption. Will you be replaced, and if so, when?

You also say a lot of businesses can't afford automation, but you should be more specific. For instance, why did pizza and other restaurants employ delivery drivers, but Chipotle and many McDonalds didn't? How did that change with Doordash, and how many more customers did the restaurant industry gain who lacked drivers? How would delivery services change with drones, and could a small business use a third party service like a drone-based Doordash to deliver their goods without any investment capital?

A mom and pop store with one person behind the cashier desk may not need a self-checkout, but could a future Atlas stock the shelves, run the register/self-scanner and secure the premises, and would that be cheaper than hiring a person to work for a year? Even at minimum wage of $15.5/hour, at 40 hrs/wk that is $32k/year, so a single robot might be cheaper. Boston Dynamic's spot is $75k, but I would expect robots to drop significantly in price making a future robot not only affordable to the average business/person, but a significant savings.

the average USA income is $31k(2019).

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-tr...g-a-qr-code-28

a burger machine is currently $30k, and requires a maintenance person to refill supplies and maintain it. so between buying the machine and staffing the person to maintain it, that's a minimum $60k investment for the first year. in my area, many fast food places are getting to be pretty consistently staffed by 2-4 people these days--most will have 50% taking orders, and the other 50% fulfilling.

while the order fulfilment could be automated as well, it doesn't change the formula all that much. places that staff even 4 people will come close to loosing money switching to robots. for arguments sake, lets say they all make minimum wage at $30k/yr with zero benefits. so the restaurant has a fixed $120k/yr in personnel operating costs.

they need to pay for the machine($30k), pay for the order automation($10k setup?), which are both recoverable over time, but need to keep paying 1 minimum wage person($30k) to refill the machine, but then require at least 1 educated/knowledgeable people to maintain and update the ordering system, and 1 person to keep the robots in mechanical shape, in my area that's somewhere nearing $70-100k/yr per person. even using the $70k base, it means $180k operating budget for the first year.

while the order automation system really only needs physical labor to maintain, the robots take parts that wear. eventually those parts need to be replaced. so it means that the $30k initial cost might drop to a yearly $5-10k cost.

we're down to $135k-140k/yr. really close, but at what cost? now there's people with higher education that expect higher cost of living adjustments and benefits, which further skew the equation.


different approach; let's assume it all makes sense and robots take over all the boring easy jobs like making burgers, doing dry cleaning, etc.

we'll then have a large glut of otherwise functional people.

the even bigger question then is "what do we do with all these people?"
do we make the already stressed welfare program bigger despite even less workers paying into it? start a "purge"? ship them to mars?

if anything, the 'make the robots do it' answer is going to end up costing us humans even more money than before with all these restless, jobless people not having anything to do.

[ichitaka05]

Which one? Either way, both (librarian trainer & forum moderator) cannot be done by AI. There are too many dumb ppl for AI comprehend it or even handle it. Hell, AI will prob quit in 3 days trying to train Librarians. Librarian degree is a master degree (MLS/MLA)… & I question if they even graduated Jr High. Of course, not all the library employees has MLS/MLA.

I would love to see AI become a forum moderator… but def not gonna happen

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

the average USA income is $31k(2019).

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-tr...g-a-qr-code-28

a burger machine is currently $30k, and requires a maintenance person to refill supplies and maintain it. so between buying the machine and staffing the person to maintain it, that's a minimum $60k investment for the first year. in my area, many fast food places are getting to be pretty consistently staffed by 2-4 people these days--most will have 50% taking orders, and the other 50% fulfilling.

while the order fulfilment could be automated as well, it doesn't change the formula all that much. places that staff even 4 people will come close to loosing money switching to robots. for arguments sake, lets say they all make minimum wage at $30k/yr with zero benefits. so the restaurant has a fixed $120k/yr in personnel operating costs.

they need to pay for the machine($30k), pay for the order automation($10k setup?), which are both recoverable over time, but need to keep paying 1 minimum wage person($30k) to refill the machine, but then require at least 1 educated/knowledgeable people to maintain and update the ordering system, and 1 person to keep the robots in mechanical shape, in my area that's somewhere nearing $70-100k/yr per person. even using the $70k base, it means $180k operating budget for the first year.

while the order automation system really only needs physical labor to maintain, the robots take parts that wear. eventually those parts need to be replaced. so it means that the $30k initial cost might drop to a yearly $5-10k cost.

we're down to $135k-140k/yr. really close, but at what cost? now there's people with higher education that expect higher cost of living adjustments and benefits, which further skew the equation.


different approach; let's assume it all makes sense and robots take over all the boring easy jobs like making burgers, doing dry cleaning, etc.

we'll then have a large glut of otherwise functional people.

the even bigger question then is "what do we do with all these people?"
do we make the already stressed welfare program bigger despite even less workers paying into it? start a "purge"? ship them to mars?

if anything, the 'make the robots do it' answer is going to end up costing us humans even more money than before with all these restless, jobless people not having anything to do.

Like I said, on a long enough continuum, we will all be replaced. You can buy a used 65'' TV for a few hundred bucks. You can buy a used car for a few hundred to a few thousand bucks, so expect robots to be super cheap. Many of the materials in a robot will not be very expensive. If cloud servers control the robots then the hardware on the robots might be minimal. Eventually everyone will be replaced in a socialist utopia, or we will work at competitively bread crumb wages in some unsustainable dystopian future that is likely to lead to class genocide and war.

The future is a UBI and rations at minimum to keep the masses satisfied enough to not revolt, or we will live at a time where productivity is massively cheap because of the robots and efficiency of scale. No one will need to work because everything is being done already. People are free to paint, walk, read, explore nature, enjoy life in a very utopian way. There is no point in contributing to society in any way because AI has already produced the solutions. In fact, the rate of innovation is so fast that it would be hard to even start production because the product would be rendered immediately obsolete the second it was made. It would either be a vacation every day, or it would be miserable. I don't know.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by ichitaka05

Which one? Either way, both (librarian trainer & forum moderator) cannot be done by AI. There are too many dumb ppl for AI comprehend it or even handle it. Hell, AI will prob quit in 3 days trying to train Librarians. Librarian degree is a master degree (MLS/MLA)… & I question if they even graduated Jr High. Of course, not all the library employees has MLS/MLA.

I would love to see AI become a forum moderator… but def not gonna happen

I think a forum moderator will come sooner than later. It is fairly easy for language software to spot profanity, vulgar comments, arguing, mentioning politics, or any other forum rules. Even if the AI only got 90% of bots and trolls, the forum members can report bots and trolls, so there is a self-regulation for an AI to use as backup. If Watson can beat Ken Jennings in Jeopardy ten years ago then of course ChatGP/basic-AI could handle forums now or in the near future, given interest and a reasonable price.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Like I said, on a long enough continuum, we will all be replaced. You can buy a used 65'' TV for a few hundred bucks. You can buy a used car for a few hundred to a few thousand bucks, so expect robots to be super cheap. Many of the materials in a robot will not be very expensive. If cloud servers control the robots then the hardware on the robots might be minimal. Eventually everyone will be replaced in a socialist utopia, or we will work at competitively bread crumb wages in some unsustainable dystopian future that is likely to lead to class genocide and war.

The future is a UBI and rations at minimum to keep the masses satisfied enough to not revolt, or we will live at a time where productivity is massively cheap because of the robots and efficiency of scale. No one will need to work because everything is being done already. People are free to paint, walk, read, explore nature, enjoy life in a very utopian way. There is no point in contributing to society in any way because AI has already produced the solutions. In fact, the rate of innovation is so fast that it would be hard to even start production because the product would be rendered immediately obsolete the second it was made. It would either be a vacation every day, or it would be miserable. I don't know.

this concept has been entertained and explored in the past many real-life studies involving a constant income.

the reality is that humans are lazy. no one does anything but sit around and watch the world spin without a purpose. as much as we all like the idea of not working, it does in fact give us all a purpose that we otherwise wouldn't have.

the rate of innovation would stall out at that point, as the entire basis of current society is to work to continue living, and the people that would still desire to work when they no longer need to maintain a living, will pale in comparison to the people that would simply choose not to work.

[alex87f]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Like I said, on a long enough continuum, we will all be replaced. You can buy a used 65'' TV for a few hundred bucks. You can buy a used car for a few hundred to a few thousand bucks, so expect robots to be super cheap. Many of the materials in a robot will not be very expensive. If cloud servers control the robots then the hardware on the robots might be minimal. Eventually everyone will be replaced in a socialist utopia, or we will work at competitively bread crumb wages in some unsustainable dystopian future that is likely to lead to class genocide and war.

The future is a UBI and rations at minimum to keep the masses satisfied enough to not revolt, or we will live at a time where productivity is massively cheap because of the robots and efficiency of scale. No one will need to work because everything is being done already. People are free to paint, walk, read, explore nature, enjoy life in a very utopian way. There is no point in contributing to society in any way because AI has already produced the solutions. In fact, the rate of innovation is so fast that it would be hard to even start production because the product would be rendered immediately obsolete the second it was made. It would either be a vacation every day, or it would be miserable. I don't know.

Your post makes voting for (far) left-wing parties the only reasonable choice, where AI and robotization is heavily regulated by enlightened individuals.

Then again, I can't recall reading utopian content where free trade and minimal state involvement were the norm. Maybe there were onto something.

In any case, as lazy as we are, we need something to look forward to, and we need to exercise our creativity / craftsmanship. Most of us wouldn't last a year in a world where you have no goals and no need to do anything. Even our literary, philosophical or artistic work has roots in the everyday struggle.