Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

Normally I'd start with a news article, but I'd rather relaunch this thread with a mention of something curious I found while looking for said topic-starting articles to post: so many neoliberal news groups seem obsessed with downplaying technological unemployment and the progress in AI that it's almost comical. Looking at Forbes alone, I can find so many articles that seem to be all about reassuring their readers that AI and robotics will only ever make jobs.
If we were talking about just robots, I'd be very inclined to agree. If anything, if this were the 1960s and AI was simply some algorithmic magic tricks by a few deluded geniuses, I'd even doubt there would be a meaningful robotic revolution. But times are different, and they're different for a reason. At some point it's going to become obvious that the "norm" is impossible to return to.

There is a less hard version of this, which is more or less doubt that the changes will be swift enough to unemploy everyone all at once and that we're entering a multigenerational twilight zone. You need to learn to future-proof yourself and stay attractive to employers through permanent education and highly adaptive skills. This seems to be yet more longing for the status quo: have all the benefits of transformative AI with none of the upsetting side-effects, keeping all the nasty stuff deep in the future so we don't have to dwell on it or consider radical changes to society.

I don't know the future, and nothing is absolute. But I will say that GPT-3 and the rise of transformers should have given plenty of people great pause for a damn good reason. With GPT-3, we're at a corner, and we don't know exactly what's around that corner other than that we know the corner is indeed there. It could lead to a dead-end or it could lead to something else entirely. We're not going to know for sure until we see the next generation unveiled, as GPT-3 is a mere language model on steroids. There are architectural challenges to overcome. But if we do overcome them, then the days of transformative AI will be claustrophobically close, perhaps too close for comfort, and it ought to be silly to take seriously any article that tries to peddle a Y2K Status Quo Trap.

[Yuli Ban]

Robots and artificial intelligence to guide Australia’s first fully automated farm
Food Agility chief executive Richard Norton said the reality of "hands-free" farming' was closer than many people realised

Robots and artificial intelligence will replace workers on Australia's first fully automated farm created at a cost of $20 million.
Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga will create the "hands-free farm" on a 1,900-hectare property to demonstrate what robots and artificial intelligence can do without workers in the paddock.

Food Agility chief executive Richard Norton said the reality of "hands-free" farming' was closer than many people realised.

"Full automation is not a distant concept. We already have mines in the Pilbara operated entirely through automation", he said

A lot of future farming technology has been demonstrated a field days and events around Australia.(ABC News: Kathleen Calderwood)

[Yuli Ban]

The coming productivity boom

The last 15 years have been tough times for many Americans, but there are now encouraging signs of a turnaround.

Productivity growth, a key driver for higher living standards, averaged only 1.3% since 2006, less than half the rate of the previous decade. But on June 3, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US labor productivity increased by 5.4% in the first quarter of 2021. What’s better, there’s reason to believe that this is not just a blip, but rather a harbinger of better times ahead: a productivity surge that will match or surpass the boom times of the 1990s.

There are three reasons that this time around the productivity J-curve will be bigger and faster than in the past.

The first is technological: the past decade has delivered an astonishing cluster of technology breakthroughs. The most important ones are in AI: the development of machine learning algorithms combined with large decline in prices for data storage and improvements in computing power has allowed firms to address challenges from vision and speech to prediction and diagnosis. The fast-growing cloud computing market has made these innovations accessible to smaller firms.

[Yuli Ban]

[erowind]

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[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Automate for people, not for processes
Whether or not you foresee the coming of “hyperautomation” — the notion that every business process that can be automated should or indeed will be automated in the future — it’s clear that the majority of corporations across the globe have already begun to strategize for this inevitability

An early 2020 global survey of business leaders by McKinsey & Co. revealed that close to a third of all companies worldwide have already fully automated at least one function — and that was before the pandemic. Enterprises in most industries have since shifted their automation attempts into overdrive, hoping to future-proof as much as is possible in the face of such unpredictability.

In their efforts to automate, many businesses prioritize individual process needs without prioritizing user experience. A company can achieve some cost savings this way, but such automations often fail to fully realize their potential.

Why? It risks alienating the people it set out to serve — meaning few people actually choose to use the tool.

According to a November Zapier automation confidence survey, nearly a third of workers said they were not yet convinced that automation is useful in their current role. And 10% felt it overly difficult to find time to learn the new skills required to benefit from automated applications on the job.

[Yuli Ban]

Automation Helped Kill up to 70% of the US's Middle-Class Jobs

• Automation powered up to 70% of US middle class erosion in recent decades, according to a new study.
• Automation exacerbated wage inequality while yielding small productivity gains, the researchers said.
• Work has been allocated away from middle-income jobs since the 1980s, and middle-class real wages have tumbled.

[Yuli Ban]

Restaurants are starting to hire robots instead of people who are demanding higher pay -

After months of waiting for workers to rejoin the labor force, some businesses have had it.

Just 10% of job seekers are urgently looking for openings, according to a recent survey conducted by hiring giant Indeed. Whether it's because of virus fears, childcare costs, financial cushions, or enhanced unemployment benefits, the jobless aren't clamoring for many of the jobs on offer, which are largely in the hard-hit restaurant and hospitality space.
Enter the QR-code. This technology, which allows a short-staffed restaurant to save on having a person physically bringing a menu to a diner's table, is the canary in the coal mine of automation. Other signs of an automation revolution are cropping up.
Hiring issues have been widespread in the restaurant industry for several months, as Insider reported, with major firms like McDonald's struggling to contend with the national labor shortage. A handful of them have begun turning to technology as a replacement to low-wage workers. For instance, Cracker Barrel rolled out a mobile app that lets customers pay for meals; McDonald's started testing automated drive-thru ordering at 10 Chicago locations; and Dave & Buster's plans to expand its contactless ordering.
The benefits are obvious. Automated solutions are often one-time investments, boost productivity, and don't require expensive solutions to fixing a staffing crisis like the signing bonuses also growing in popularity.

These aren't really robots, but I understand the sentiment.

[Yuli Ban]

Jesus

[waitingforthe2030s]

Jesus

I was going to post this. Crazy.

[raklian]

I was going to post this. Crazy.

Not quite as crazy as.... just seen long time coming.

[Yuli Ban]

Farming Robots Are Our Future. Will it be a Utopia or an Agricultural Dystopia?
German economist Thomas Daum has published research that explores how farming robots could lead the industry towards an environmentally friendly and abundant utopia, or a dystopia of heavy machinery and low-quality harvests

The use of robots in agriculture is nothing new. Primitive versions of autonomous vehicles were already in use in the early 20th century. As technology continued to advance and after the invention of the computer, proper agricultural machines began to be developed.

These can come in the form of robots that would perform harvesting tasks, such as Root A.I.’s tomato picking machine “Virgo” and autonomous vehicles using technology similar to self-driving cars to take care of fields. A more complex application of robots in agriculture can be found in EarthSense’s “TerraSentia field phenotyping system,” utilizing laser sensors to travel down rows of crop fields while simultaneously collecting detailed data on crop quality and health. Robots have also been developed to perform other more sweeping tasks in the field, such as seeding the ground or spraying the crops with pesticides. Total automation of outdoor agrarian land seems unrealistic for the near future, as the unpredictability of natural conditions could cause too many variables for modern robots to overcome. However, indoor farms and alternative planting methods may alleviate this issue.

This illustration shows the utopian farm robot scenario. (Image: Natalis Lorenz)

[wjfox]

Robots are poised to start unloading lorries

The last pieces of warehouse automation will soon be in place

Aug 7th 2021 edition

Unloading lorries is wearisome for people, but hardly an intellectual challenge. For robots it is the reverse. Robots never tire. They do, however, have problems interpreting the data streaming in from the cameras and laser scanners that are their eyes. Seeing where one box in the back of a crowded lorry ends and another begins is second nature to a human being. But even the best artificial-vision systems struggle to cope.

And that is just the start. The next question is what the robot should do with what it sees. The less tidy the contents, the greater the problem. Shrink-wrapped pallets of packages are one thing, the miscellaneous jumbles of objects handled by parcel-delivery businesses quite another. Cases may get wedged, or be fumbled. Or the robot may need to work out how to lift an irregular consignment like a set of skis. People learn how to do such things gradually, as they grow up. And machines have to learn, too. That takes time and a lot of training.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-t ... s/21803299

[Yuli Ban]

Amid the Labor Shortage, Robots Step in to Make the French Fries

In a White Castle just southeast of Chicago, the 100-year-old purveyor of fast food has played host for the past year to an unusual, and unusually hardworking, employee: a robotic fry cook.

Flippy, as the robot is known, is no gimmick, says Jamie Richardson, a White Castle vice president. It works 23 hours a day (one hour is reserved for cleaning) and has operated almost continuously for the past year, manning—or robot-ing—the fry station at White Castle No. 42 in Merrillville, Ind. An industrial robot arm sheathed in a grease-proof, white fabric sleeve, it slides along a rail attached to the ceiling, lifting and lowering each basket when ready, immune to spatters and spills. White Castle is so pleased with Flippy’s performance that, in partnership with its maker, Miso Robotics, the chain plans to roll out an improved version, Flippy 2.0, to 10 more of its restaurants across the country.

There were more than 1.3 million unfilled job openings at restaurants and hotels as of the end of May, double the number a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. For many restaurants, surviving the current labor crunch and resulting wage inflation means using self-service ordering kiosks and other tech tools to automate away some customer-facing jobs and streamline things like online ordering. But entrepreneurs and industry executives also are trying to tackle a bigger, knottier problem: automating the production of food itself.

[wjfox]

Australia: Warehouse job cuts ahead as supermarkets increase automation

9 August 2021

Australia’s major supermarket chains are expected to outlay around $10 billion in capital expenditure over the next three years, in a bid to drive down labour costs and cash in on the growing online grocery market.

The major component of this investment is in new, highly-automated distribution centres, which will replace smaller warehouses across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, destroying thousands of jobs.

The motive for this is clear. The forthcoming closure of Woolworths’ Yennora, Minchinbury and Mulgrave distribution centres is expected to cut the company’s wage bill by $135 million per year and bring $65 million in other annual cost savings. Coles’ “Second Century” strategy aims to slash a billion dollars by 2023, relative to 2018 costs.

These sweeping restructuring operations are driven by the profit demands of the companies’ major shareholders, which include the world’s largest banks and investment funds.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... a-a10.html

[Ozzie guy]

Australia: Warehouse job cuts ahead as supermarkets increase automation

9 August 2021

Australia’s major supermarket chains are expected to outlay around $10 billion in capital expenditure over the next three years, in a bid to drive down labour costs and cash in on the growing online grocery market.

The major component of this investment is in new, highly-automated distribution centres, which will replace smaller warehouses across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, destroying thousands of jobs.

The motive for this is clear. The forthcoming closure of Woolworths’ Yennora, Minchinbury and Mulgrave distribution centres is expected to cut the company’s wage bill by $135 million per year and bring $65 million in other annual cost savings. Coles’ “Second Century” strategy aims to slash a billion dollars by 2023, relative to 2018 costs.

These sweeping restructuring operations are driven by the profit demands of the companies’ major shareholders, which include the world’s largest banks and investment funds.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... a-a10.html

My initial reaction to this is I don't like it, despite being a futurist the lower class worker in me is concerned about when I need to find another crappy job after lockdown. Finding jobs that are crappy is already hard in my Australian city. Whist UBI would do a lot to protect capitalism from upcoming dissent I can't help but want it.

[wjfox]

Factories of the future: we’re spending heavily to give workers skills they won’t need by 2030

“This government is obsessed with skilling up our population,” said Boris Johnson in his recent speech on “levelling up”. There is still a fair amount of uncertainty about exactly what the UK prime minister’s plan to level up the regions will involve, but manufacturing and skills seem close to the heart of it.

The government is trying to achieve a renaissance in vocational education with its industry-focused T-level courses for students, “Skills Bootcamp” retraining programmes for adults, and increased funding for further education in general. Together with the recent announcement of a new Nissan “mega-factory” in Sunderland, some might argue that the UK is finally becoming a high-skill vocational manufacturing economy to rival Germany and Japan.

Unfortunately, the world is moving on. In the factories of the future, the role of skills will be dramatically different. We are in the early stages of what is known as industry 4.0: digital manufacturing that attempts to automate and regulate every aspect of production, including the human. There is little sign that the UK government is thinking about this, or what it means for the youngsters looking to work in manufacturing in future.

In a three-year study, I found that learning in factories is fundamentally shifting from human workers to machines. In high-tech manufacturing, machines are being connected to one another in what is often referred to as the internet of things – using sensors to gather information and send signals back to the production process. In the study, we refer to factories and even products becoming “chatty” through all this communication of information, and predict that this will lead to profound changes in manufacturing by 2030.

https://theconversation.com/factories-o ... 030-165109

[wjfox]

Tesco opens new checkout-free store

19th October 2021

Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket, has today opened its first checkout-free store in central London, giving customers the opportunity to shop and pay without scanning a product or using a checkout.

Retail giant Amazon has pioneered the idea of automated shopping, as seen with its Amazon Go store format. The first of these launched in January 2018 in downtown Seattle and nearly 30 others have opened since. The concept is now catching on with other companies – including Tesco, the UK's biggest supermarket and third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues. It has just launched its own automated store in central London.

The rollout of this technology at Tesco Express High Holborn follows a successful trial in Welwyn Garden City, a town north of London. The High Holborn branch has already been a cashless store since it first opened in 2018 and is now checkout-less too.

The newly developed system – called "GetGo" – offers the same products but with a faster and more convenient shopping experience. A customer simply downloads the mobile app, scans the QR code generated on their screen, picks up the groceries they need and then leaves the store.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... nology.htm

[Yuli Ban]