Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

[wjfox]

[Powers]

No way there wouldn't be thefts here lol.

[wjfox]

How robots are taking over warehouse work

12 hours ago

[...]

Back in Luton, Ocado has taken its automation process to a higher level.

The robots which zoom around the grid, now bring items to robotic arms, which reach out and grab what they need for the customer's shop.

[...]

The Luton warehouse has 44 robotic arms, which at the moment account for 15% of the products that flow through the facility, that's about 400,000 items a week. The rest are handled by staff at picking stations.

[...]

In two or three years Ocado expects the robots will account for 70% of the products.

This inevitably means fewer human staff, but the Luton warehouse still has 1,400 staff, and many of those will still be needed in the future.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68639533



OCADO GROUP

[wjfox]

Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO

There could be "minimal" need for call centres within a year

By Rob Thubron
April 26, 2024 at 5:18 AM

It's no secret that certain types of jobs are more threatened by artificial intelligence than others. Call center workers fall into this category, and while we've already seen a few companies replace phone-based support staff with generative AI, there are warnings that the entire industry could be comprised mostly of chatbots in as soon as a year.

The grim prediction comes from K Krithivasan, head of Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The second-largest company in India by market cap, it has more than 616,000 employees worldwide.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Krithivasan said AI will result in a "minimal" need for call centers. The CEO added that while "we have not seen any job reduction" so far, that will change as multinational clients adopt generative AI. The technology is expected to have a massive impact on the customer help center industry, which, according to a Gartner report in 2022, employs about 17 million people.

"In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all," Krithivasan told the FT. "We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer's pain point."

The prospect of a chatbot being able to fulfil all of a customer's requests over the phone with ease might sound like a long way off, but Krithivasan believes they will be able to seamlessly replace humans in "maybe a year or so down the line."

https://www.techspot.com/news/102749-ge ... ustry.html

[wjfox]

[Tadasuke]

35 minutes talk between Chelsea Follett and Jay Richards - American analytic philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion.




You don't have to agree, I'm not saying he's entirely correct. But you might want to listen. He disagrees with the notion that there's not going to be work for people and that "this time is completely different".

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

This article covers many subjects, but I'm posting this here as it relates to a point I want to make.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/th ... r-BB1ocInV

I used to wonder whether people's lives would become meaningless if we just lived tech-indulgent lives. The reality is not that we're hooked on tech or whatever but rather that people are struggling to provide for themselves. Once we all get free money, we're going to enter a new era of self-actualization

[Yuli Ban]

[caltrek]

AI Probably Won’t Take Your Job, But It Might Make It Worse
by A.J. Schumann, Omar Ocampo
July 25, 2024

Introduction:

(Other Words) Since the Industrial Revolution, workers have contended with technological threats to their jobs. Today that’s artificial intelligence, or AI.

AI has been a mainstay in our popular imagination for decades — from apocalyptic robot takeovers to thriving post-work societies. All that remains science fiction, but many of us understandably worry that AI might take our jobs.

The good news? That’s unlikely. The reality — and the less good news — is that AI is rapidly increasing surveillance in the workplace.

An overwhelming majority of workers say AI will have a direct impact on their jobs, but they don’t agree on how. Some feel that it will help, while 42 percent fear that some aspects of their job will soon be automated.

That’s certainly what many tech executives have suggested will happen. Reports that a majority of U.S. firms are planning to incorporate AI within the next year have compounded those concerns. In fact, Goldman Sachs predicts that generative AI could “substitute up to one-fourth of current work.”

Further discussed in the article is the role AI may have in worker surveillance.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/ai-probably-won ... -worse/

[firestar464]

They do have some points about labor rights but a lot of it is cope IMO

[wjfox]

The World’s Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever — and Fear

The experiences of staff in the Philippines’ outsourcing industry are a preview of the challenges and choices coming soon to white-collar workers around the globe.

August 27, 2024 at 10:00 PM GMT+1

While the rest of the world is still debating what artificial intelligence might mean for jobs, citizens in the Philippines are already living in the new reality.

The same relentless drive to cut labor costs that saw back-office roles shipped to the archipelago in the first place is now starting to turn over some of their duties to bots. All of the major players in its vast outsourcing industry, which is forecast to cross $38 billion in revenue this year, are rushing to rollout AI tools to stay competitive and defend their business models.

Over the past eight or nine months, most have introduced some form of AI “copilot.” These algorithms mainly work alongside human operators, doing tasks like summarizing all previous contact a customer has had with the company, whether that’s via call or email to prevent the need for a lengthy explanatory conversation — theoretically at least. Such a process requires the chaining together of advanced speech recognition technology, content processing, sifting through vast amounts of data, analyzing sentiments and providing contextual responses — all in real time. It would have been the stuff of science fiction only a few years ago.

[...]

Avasant, an outsourcing advisory firm that works extensively in the Philippines, estimates that up to 300,000 business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs could be lost in the country to AI in the next five years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... Uz730hdmgo

[funkervogt]

The U.S. job market for software engineers is rapidly declining

Original WSJ article [paywalled]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-jobs-arti ... e-cce22393
Daily Mail summary of the WSJ article [free]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... yoffs.html

[firestar464]

Just use an archive.ph link

https://archive.ph/jF7Qr

[Yuli Ban]

McDonald’s touchscreen kiosks were feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened

Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s and other fast-food chains have loomed as job killers since they were first rolled out 25 years ago. But nobody predicted what actually happened.

In one of the earliest mentions of kiosks in fast-food settings in 1999, now-defunct trade industry publication Business Information said that McDonald’s was working to “develop an electronic order-taking system that may eventually replace some of its human equivalents.”
Instead, touchscreen kiosks have added extra work for kitchen staff and pushed customers to order more food than they do at the cash register. The kiosks show the unintended consequences of technology in fast-food and retail settings, including self-checkout. Chains are now experimenting with artificial intelligence at drive-thru lanes, and the experience with kiosks holds lessons for them.

From me:

What I was saying is that I've noticed that there seems to be this phenomenon of a sort, of "incomplete automation" caused by weaker, narrower AI than is necessary to sufficiently automate a task, a sort of middleground between mechanization and full automation.
This also informs a lot of our predictions and ideas and reactions to automation, as a lot of people write off kiosks and automated servers and self-checkouts and autonomous vehicles out of hand because of the limitations of the technology that exist today
For example, let's imagine how an autonomous ordering kiosk would properly work and not add more jobs, or redefine jobs

For starters, the underlying technology needs some ability to understand natural language, reasoning, and have some agency. One could be able to immediately come up to it and the UI and responses would be extremely intuitive.
Right now, it's not, though we're making progress (such as with yourself: o1)
But this incomplete state is responsible, ironically, for causing MORE frustration.
Actually, another good example is AI art and writing. AI art crossed a threshold of being coherent, and the outputs absolutely look stunning most of the time, but they're rarely perfect, often possessing serious drawbacks such as a total lack of scene understanding or composition, and of course the infamous hands and faces.
Whether physical or digital, we're at this weird stage of automation where it's good enough to be deployed, but not good enough to be end-to-end or satisfying unless you are willing to accept frustration, and that is what causes it to be more frustrating than either.

There really needs to be a name or terminology for this phenomenon....

From o1:

You've identified a compelling and increasingly relevant phenomenon in the realm of automation and artificial intelligence: the deployment of technologies that are "good enough" to be implemented but fall short of delivering seamless, end-to-end automation. This intermediate state often results in user frustration and inefficiencies, as the technology requires human intervention or fails to meet user expectations fully.

### **Possible Terminology for "Incomplete Automation"**

While there isn't a widely recognized term that perfectly encapsulates this phenomenon, several existing concepts come close. Here are a few suggestions and explanations:

1. **Partial Automation:**
- **Definition:** Systems that automate some aspects of a task but still require significant human involvement.
- **Example:** Self-service kiosks that handle order taking but require human staff to manage complex transactions or handle exceptions.

2. **Assisted Automation:**
- **Definition:** Technologies designed to assist humans in performing tasks rather than fully automating them.
- **Example:** AI-driven recommendation systems that support but do not replace human decision-making.

3. **Semi-Automation:**
- **Definition:** Processes where automation handles routine tasks, while humans manage non-routine or complex aspects.
- **Example:** Autonomous vehicles that can navigate highways but require human intervention in city traffic or adverse conditions.

4. **Hybrid Automation:**
- **Definition:** A blend of automated systems and human labor working together to complete tasks.
- **Example:** Customer service chatbots that handle common queries but escalate more complex issues to human agents.

5. **Frustration Automation:**
- **Definition:** Automation that, due to its limitations, leads to increased user frustration rather than enhancing the experience.
- **Example:** Kiosks that frequently malfunction or are difficult to navigate, causing delays and customer dissatisfaction.

6. **Intermediary Automation:**
- **Definition:** Technologies that serve as a transitional phase between manual processes and full automation.
- **Example:** Self-checkout machines that require human assistance for certain transactions or troubleshooting.

7. **Augmented Automation:**
- **Definition:** Systems that enhance human capabilities but do not replace them entirely.
- **Example:** AI tools that provide data insights to analysts but rely on human interpretation for decision-making.

8. **Cognitive Bottleneck Automation:**
- **Definition:** Automation that introduces cognitive challenges for users, creating bottlenecks in workflow.
- **Example:** AI art generators that produce impressive visuals but struggle with specific details like hands or faces, requiring human correction.

9. **Technological Mediocrity:**
- **Definition:** Technologies that achieve a mediocre level of performance, failing to fully meet user needs or expectations.
- **Example:** Voice-activated assistants that understand basic commands but falter with complex queries or accents.

10. **Imperfect Automation:**
- **Definition:** Automation systems that are not fully reliable or capable, leading to gaps that humans must fill.
- **Example:** Autonomous ordering kiosks that misinterpret orders, necessitating human intervention to correct mistakes.

### **Proposed Term: "Imperfect Automation"**

Among the suggestions, **"Imperfect Automation"** seems particularly apt for capturing the essence of this phenomenon. It succinctly conveys that while automation is present, it is not flawless and requires human oversight or intervention to function effectively. This term highlights the gap between the potential of automation technologies and their current capabilities, emphasizing the need for further advancements to achieve seamless integration.

### **Implications of Imperfect Automation**

1. **User Experience:**
- **Frustration and Inefficiency:** As you've noted, incomplete automation can lead to increased user frustration, longer task completion times, and decreased satisfaction.
- **Trust Issues:** Users may lose trust in automated systems if they frequently encounter errors or require assistance.

2. **Workforce Impact:**
- **Job Redefinition:** Rather than eliminating jobs, imperfect automation shifts roles and may require employees to develop new skills.
- **Employee Morale:** Constantly dealing with malfunctioning or inefficient automated systems can affect employee satisfaction and morale.

3. **Economic Considerations:**
- **Cost vs. Benefit:** Businesses must weigh the costs of implementing and maintaining imperfect automation against the benefits it provides.
- **Investment in Improvement:** Recognizing imperfect automation underscores the importance of investing in technology improvements and employee training.

4. **Design and Development:**
- **User-Centric Design:** Emphasizing the need for more intuitive and reliable automated systems that genuinely enhance user experience.
- **Iterative Improvement:** Acknowledging imperfections can drive continuous improvement and innovation in automation technologies.

5. **Public Perception:**
- **Skepticism Towards Automation:** Repeated negative experiences with imperfect automation can lead to broader skepticism and resistance to adopting new technologies.
- **Need for Transparency:** Clear communication about the capabilities and limitations of automated systems can help manage user expectations.

### **Moving Forward: Addressing Imperfect Automation**

To mitigate the challenges posed by imperfect automation, several strategies can be employed:

1. **Enhanced AI Capabilities:**
- **Natural Language Processing:** Improving the ability of systems to understand and process human language more accurately.
- **Contextual Understanding:** Developing AI that can comprehend context and nuance to perform tasks more effectively.

2. **Human-AI Collaboration:**
- **Seamless Integration:** Designing systems where humans and AI can work together fluidly, leveraging each other's strengths.
- **Feedback Loops:** Implementing mechanisms for users to provide feedback, enabling continuous improvement of automated systems.

3. **Comprehensive Training:**
- **Employee Training:** Ensuring that staff are well-trained to manage, troubleshoot, and complement automated systems.
- **User Education:** Educating customers on how to effectively use automated technologies to reduce frustration and errors.

4. **Robust Testing and Iteration:**
- **Extensive Testing:** Conducting thorough testing of automated systems in real-world scenarios to identify and address shortcomings.
- **Iterative Development:** Continuously refining and updating technologies based on user feedback and performance data.

5. **User-Centric Design Principles:**
- **Intuitive Interfaces:** Designing user interfaces that are easy to navigate and understand, minimizing the learning curve.
- **Accessibility Considerations:** Ensuring that automated systems are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.

### **Conclusion**

The concept of **"Imperfect Automation"** aptly describes the current state of many automated systems that fall short of full functionality, leading to a mix of benefits and frustrations. Recognizing and naming this phenomenon is a crucial step toward addressing its challenges. By focusing on enhancing AI capabilities, fostering human-AI collaboration, investing in training, and prioritizing user-centric design, we can move closer to achieving more seamless and effective automation that truly benefits both businesses and their customers.

[Powers]

Now summarize all this information please.

[wjfox]

[firestar464]

Gotta make sure these people have some sort of way to support themselves and maintain quality of life after they are replaced.

[wjfox]

US dockworkers suspend ports strike until January

4 October 2024, 00:06 BST
Updated 2 hours ago

The union representing tens of thousands of dockworkers across the US has agreed to suspend its strike while negotiations continue.

Members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) walked out on Tuesday at 14 major ports along the east and Gulf coasts, halting container traffic from Maine to Texas.

The union says it has reached a tentative agreement on wages and will go back to work on Friday until 15 January, when they will return to the bargaining table to negotiate "all other outstanding issues".

The action marked the first such shutdown in almost 50 years and threatened to wreak chaos amid the busy holiday shopping season and forthcoming presidential election.

"Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume," said a joint statement by the ILA and the employers' group - United States Maritime Alliance (USMX).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8jxnn76qwo