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Robotics Businesses

This Was the Year the Robot Takeover of Service Jobs Began (gizmodo.com) 207

merbs writes: Out of the three major sectors of the economy -- agriculture, manufacturing, and service -- two are already largely automated. Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs. And we all know the rust belt song and dance, beat out to outsourcing and mechanization. Which is largely why some 80 percent of all American jobs are service jobs. And this year, quietly but in the open, the robots and their investors came for them, too.

There's a case to be made that 2018 is the year automation took its biggest lunge forward toward our largest pool of human labor: Amazon opened five cashier-less stores; three in Seattle, one in Chicago, and one in San Francisco. Self-ordering kiosks invaded fast food and franchise restaurants in a big way. Smaller robot-centric outfits like the long-awaited auto-burger joint Creator opened, too, and so did a number of others.

In Las Vegas, our service job mecca, hotels' and casinos' widespread plans for automation in everything from bartending to waitstaff to hotel work led one of the city's most powerful hospitality unions to the brink of a 50,000-person strike last summer before a successful negotiation was reached... Combined, they act as a set of markers on a trendline we can no longer ignore. We face the prospect of major upheaval in the last dependable pool of jobs we've got.

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This Was the Year the Robot Takeover of Service Jobs Began

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  • So I guess it's not the end of the world. Plus, I can always go back to dancing in the clubs like I did to get myself through college.
    • by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:29PM (#57839248)
      This is because the government is employing an insane amount of people now.
      - The DOD now has over 2.8 million active or reserve on payroll
      - The DHS has 229k they also use a massive number of full time contractors (let's assume 100k)
      - The TSA has 60k (they also use up to 1 million additional contractors)
      - The DoE is 13k employed another 120k consultants/contractors
      - Police departments employ over a million people
      - Fire has over 1.1 million
      - Half a million prison guards, but it looks like there's 3 times as many workers at prisons as guards... so let's say 1.5 million prison workers
      - Can't find the count, but adding heads at defense contractors (Lockheed, Honeywell, etc...) I come up with about 10 million people
      - There are at least 2.2 million people removed from the count because of incarceration
      - There are 10-20 million people working jobs not directly for the military but that wouldn't exist if not for the military. This includes things like gas stations near base.
      - There where about 1.2 million federally funded road construction jobs in 2018
      - There were probably about another 1.2 million jobs producing road construction equipment and supplies.

      There are a total of 180 million working age (not working eligible) people in the U.S. meaning 20-64 years old. It took me 5 minutes of using Google to get this far.

      I didn't even get creative, but I'd imagine that the U.S. government now employs at least one of 3 eligible Americans or simply removes them from the job market.

      Let's also consider that the labor force participation rate was 62.9% last year. That means of the 180 million, only about a 100 million are actually trying to work.
      Remove another 4 percent or so from the count as they are unemployed. And about 28 million are part time workers (working less than 35 hours a week). So, we're now down to about 68 million full time employed workers.

      I also see that on average 1 in 3 workers are part of the gig economy which I have no idea what that really equates so. Someone says it's 16 million another one says it's more like 60 million.

      No... the unemployment rate is absolutely horrible.
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @07:55PM (#57839600) Homepage

        So what you are saying is the US government should use more automation and sack as many people as possible and this will solve the problem.

        Automation does not seem to be the problem, how you distribute the income of automation does. So do you automate to the level where you have no workers and thus eliminate all workers as customers and thus do not need any automation because you have no customers.

        Really the only problem how to distribute the rewards of automation. We all know the psychopathic 1% wants it all, not most, ALL and for the rest, well we are consumables to be used and abused, to feed ego and lusts. That is the reality of the conflict, a class one, the exploiters, the psychopaths vs the normies, the exploited.

    • You have to go back to the early 1980's to get such a bad labor force participation rate though... It's been pretty much like that since 2009.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      If you believe the official numbers, you're fooling yourself. I haven't checked into it in detail for awhile, but every time I did they have jiggered the numbers in a new way. I understand that those who follow the numbers carefully do have a way of tracking what's happening, but the numbers reported as "unemployment" bear little to no relation to reality.

  • "...with your order in about five minutes."

  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:41PM (#57838606) Homepage Journal
    I was flipping burgers in San Francisco and this Creator company came in and everyone went there and there are no burger flipping jobs left. So then I became a Chess grandmaster and the AI took that job, so I became a Go grandmaster and then the AI took those jobs too. I finally settled on being a taxi driver, so I am OK now.
  • subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:42PM (#57838614)

    We can continue to provide government subsidies [thoughtco.com], charge high import tariff on farm products [heritage.org] to make sure the farm industry can replace workers with robots, while blaming China for the lost jobs.

  • by bill.pev ( 978836 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:43PM (#57838618)
    What happens when labor has no value? Or, when all that matters is capital?
    How will people earn respect .. to say nothing of provide for their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?

    Please reply with your ideas, ideally without trolling. I would especially like to hear anything beyond the extremes of Death Universal Basic Income. Neither of these allow for self-respect.
    • by John Guilt ( 464909 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:16PM (#57838846)
      I don't follow: why does living off a Universal Luxurious Income (my preference to U.B.I.) funded by machine labour not allow for self-respect?---that would be true only if 'having a job' were the only possible source of self-respect. Being a good dancer, a sincere and hard-working follower of a martial art, a student of the Talmud or the Confucian Analects or the Eddas or mathematics, someone who grows great pot or knows the finicky way you have to prepare opium for smoking--- I have great respect for all of these, and respect myself for the extent I've done any of these (even as I admit to not having done all of them).

      .

      To use language that might draw the ire of some but which I think accurate, it is mostly the 19th-21st Century construction of masculinity in some places that equated earning your own living with self-respect---before that, what most people admired were aristos or gentlemen who by definition didn't. I mean, being self-supporting was considered desirable and worthy of respect, but it wasn't the sine qua non for self-respect. Making self-respect dependent on a job was in some way an opiate for the men who had to do them to live, and though I think opiates can be fun when not necessary, they should be treated with care.

      .

      The only shame I can see in being supported is in the pain of those doing the supporting....

    • Death, maintenance, and art. A shit-ton of people are going to die in poverty because they are unnecessary (and the elimination of service jobs is happening suddenly with no time to adapt) and the ones that don't die will maintain the machines the rich need to be rich or will make art (TV, movies, music) the wealthy consume. I would hope that the ability to create things like food and shelter would experience some democratization, but I doubt it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ideally without trolling.

      I see that you are new to the internet. Welcome!

      The problem seems intractable. In the past, we expected people to move up the knowledge curve as technology undermined the bottom. Now, technology is moving up the curve, and people will not in mass numbers be capable of moving further up to outpace it.

      Slow motion social collapse, possibly. Or maybe there will be some novel thing to come in and provide jobs only humans can do for billions. However that does not seem so very likely, and nobody has identifie

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        There needs to be a separation between work and respect. This has been vitally needed for a long time, but it's not profitable to those in power...and profit here doesn't really refer to money, it refers to power and esteem.

        The problem is that not all jobs CAN be automated. So some people are going to need to work. And the amount of work needed is greater than people will do without exterior motivation. (Also the goals. Now that I've retired I only program half to a third as much, but what I program is

        • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

          What's the real difference between an automated hamburger maker and a sandwich vending machine?

          A human had to make the sandwich and stick it in the vending machine. Presumably they got paid to do this.

          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Originally that was true, though I'm not sure it currently is. But it took a lot fewer people to make the sandwiches that ended up in the vending machines than the people who used to make the sandwiches. One of the things that changed was that the hours of availability increased dramatically, even though the quality decreased. So more sandwiches were sold. So *PERHAPS* the total number of sandwich makers remained the same...but I doubt it. The people making sandwiches in the cafe's had a lot of down ti

    • Extend that even further.

      When a machine in China can sort trash automatically using ML and cameras (in testing) and can recycle this waste into materials using minimal staff, then deliver those materials to factories which can produce manufactured homes for pennies on the dollar today.... what will happen to housing prices which is where most people in the world store their money today?

      When a meat can be produced by machine instead of from animals and programs like those sponsored by the Gates Foundation or
      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Prices are sticky to the upside. Absolutely no capitalist is thinking "Oh I want to get robots in so that I can decrease prices and pass the savings on to the consumer". No, it's "I want to get robots so that I can increase my profits".
        • I want to get robots so that I can increase my profits

          Unless the rich are extremely stupid, (which, clearly, many are) they know the robots can't make profit unless the unemployed have enough money to pay for what the robots (or outsourced jobs) produce.

          At the moment, the plan is to have the "middle income" fund the unemployed. As the relative size of the unemployed overtakes the number of middle incomers, this strategy is failing. Not helped by the fact that the "middle income" is actually not much lar

          • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

            Unless the rich are extremely stupid

            Having spoken to quite a few rich people, I'm not sure this is not the case. Wealth != brains.

          • by larkost ( 79011 )

            The problem with this thinking is that many of the people in charge of these companies have been trained (by MBA programs) to believe that the "invisible hand of the market" will solve all of these problems, and they just need to concentrate on fulfilling their own greed (because "greed is good").

            I have had a number of conversations with MBA graduates, and this way of thinking has been pounded into them in a way that more resembles a religion than a graduate course.

    • What do you mean "when"?

      Labour has never had value. People don't care about how much effort something takes. People don't care how many years of experience you need to build up in order to accomplish said thing. In a world where people treat the Dunning Kruger effect as a personal accomplishment, it can be very difficult for people to see the value in your skills.

      This is particularly notable for people in the computer industry (not to mention any kind of design field). "But my teenage nephew can do that

  • Youngins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:51PM (#57838684)

    It didn't just start. I remember calling in to the movie theater, getting a person on the phone, and having a conversation about which movies were playing. Poor woman probably wanted to kill herself, and she was replaced by a tape machine - and eventually by "MoviePhone". This was just one part of an overall move to voicemail/menu systems to replace human interaction. I remember the first self-checkout line at the grocery store, and prior to that the first barcode scanner. Prior to that the stock boys had to use a price gun to put a price on every goddamn item (I know because I was a stock boy and I had to do that). Airplanes had a flight engineer. Postal workers manually sorted mail. Companies had "secretary pools" to manually copy documents (OK, that was before my time, along with washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and dishwashers). Service jobs have been replaced by machinery since we invented machinery. Maybe it has accelerated or reached some kind of inflection point, but it certainly didn't "begin" this year.

    • I remember when MySpace was a thing.
    • It didn't just start.

      Exactly!

      The examples cited in the article are silly...I mean it's silly to use them to argue that "this was the year". Automated cashiers at supermarkets? That's been a thing for ages. Yes, over time more have been popping up....but I've yet to see one that's faster and more convenient than an actual human cashier (they used to be faster when most people avoided them, meaning there was no line...but now that they are used, I find them usually quite slower than the human-run line). Self-service kiosks at fas

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20, 2018 @04:54PM (#57838708)

    Before Before the "Whip buggy manufacturers" comments start pouring in, I got three questions for those posting them: "When are your replacement jobs going to be available?", "Will those replacement jobs pay enough for people to live on?", and "Will the vast majority of people be given the education they need to perform those jobs?"

    If the answers to those questions involve the words "In ten years", "Why would we pay that much?", "No, pay for it yourself", or just "No" then you have some thinking to do. You cannot expect to upend the vast majority's ability to provide for themselves, provide no replacement, and expect people to go along with it. They will see it for what it is: A massive power and wealth transfer from them to you, that will impoverish them and their children for generations. They will see that, and they will fight you over it.

    Yes, you may counter with "But death drones, advanced military training / equipment, and wealth", but those people will be making a choice of not how to live, but how to die. Given the choice of "Go down fighting" vs. "Starve to death / die of dehydration or sickness", many will take the "Go down fighting" option for the sole glimmer of hope, the hope of living and being better off regardless as to how small those chances may be, it provides over the idea of waiting to die.

    So I have one question for you "Where's those easy to get regardless of qualification service center jobs, Mr. Automation?" "Where are they?" Until you can answer that question, you have a problem, and soon to be blood, on your hands.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      The Whip buggy manufacturers used to have the same issues. But everyone survived.
      • True, but there was a lot of chaos an uncertainty if you wanted to stay an employed textile worker, carriage maker, carriage driver, etc.. I'm speaking about the middle and late Victorian Era during the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites might be considered backwards today, but they were real people who got displaced and had to face real consequences and in some cases they were severe for them or others (ie.. when they'd riot or tear shit up). I don't know if that has any bearing on if it's inevitable or n
  • I've done that work, and didn't like that one bit, and so since I don't think I'm fundamentally better than anyone else (note: this is different to being better at some things, at least at some times) I don't want anyone else to be forced by fear of hunger and exposure to do them when an alternative exists.

    Some ancient philosophers argued that slavery were necessary in order for others to have the leisure and energy to be, among other things, philosophers. They had something of a point, although full-on

    • s/do them/do those jobs/1
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      it could eliminate poverty

      Eliminate poverty by putting people out of work? If I don't have to pay wages to workers because I have robots, who is going to have money to buy my products?

      • Eliminate poverty by putting people out of work? If I don't have to pay wages to workers because I have robots, who is going to have money to buy my products?

        If the people own the means of production, then they're paid the dividends. You're married to pure capitalism. Get over her, she'll never love you back.

  • There are very, very few dependable pools of good jobs. Most job descriptions constantly change - emerging, growing, adapting, stagnating, expanding or being automated out of existence. Very few job descriptions stay constant for very long.

    On the up side, this is a good thing. When society realizes that there is an unmet need for a particular set of skills, people rush/train to meet the need. High demand and a low supply of qualified people means good compensation. For a while at least.

    On the down
    • "When society realizes that there is an unmet need for a particular set of skills, people rush/train to meet the need."

      Not really. There has been a shortage of doctors for decades and it isn't likely to get better. Not everyone is going to rush and train to become a doctor.
      • Re:things change (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LetterRip ( 30937 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:54PM (#57839078)

        Not really. There has been a shortage of doctors for decades and it isn't likely to get better. Not everyone is going to rush and train to become a doctor.

        Already accredited doctors controlled how many doctors that medical schools were allowed to train and how many new schools were accredited. The supply of students willing to become doctors is enormous and would have greatly exceeded demand - but supply was artificially constrained to ensure that existing doctors could charge higher rates.

        So it was actually monopoly control of supply due to artificial constraints rather than students not responding to demand.

        • This would be a great comment except that there have been TWENTY FOUR new US medical schools established in the last ten years.
          • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            And the US population has grown from 304 million to 328 million in the last 10 years. You were saying?
            • Not only that, but the US has also aged during that time. Generally, older people need more medical care.
            • seven percent change in population versus twenty percent change in number of physicians being trained. you are speaking from a position of ignorance.
          • This would be a great comment except that there have been TWENTY FOUR new US medical schools established in the last ten years.

            Do they still work based on the same principles as all the other medical schools? A type of graduate school basically (you don't have to actually have an undergraduate degree, but you had to have started studying for one), highly selective and very expensive?

            The whole system in Canada & the US is set up to constrain the number of medical doctors in order to keep their wages artificially high. In most other countries, medicine is a "normal" university course that one can enrol in right after high school,

      • by shess ( 31691 )

        "When society realizes that there is an unmet need for a particular set of skills, people rush/train to meet the need."

        Not really. There has been a shortage of doctors for decades and it isn't likely to get better. Not everyone is going to rush and train to become a doctor.

        My younger sister became a doctor. She's amazing. When she was embarking on that route, I held my tongue, because, honestly, medical doctors get a ton of shit in the US. The insurance companies make them jump through hoops, and then patients come in and lie or whine or otherwise make their lives hell, and they're in the middle trying to do good work.

        The basic problem is that anyone who can be a medical doctor worth having could also be any of a number of other high-paying jobs with lower expectations.

        • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
          I'm a doctor outside the US. I considered going to the US, I even passed the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam). But all the paperwork and "guidelines" from payers who don't necessarily have the patient's best interest at heart but rather their bottom line - put me off. I'd rather stay in this small country. I earn less but I have a great deal more freedom as to how to treat my patients - and a much lower risk of predatory lawsuits too.
      • "When society realizes that there is an unmet need for a particular set of skills, people rush/train to meet the need." Not really. There has been a shortage of doctors for decades and it isn't likely to get better. Not everyone is going to rush and train to become a doctor.

        The supply of doctors is artificially limited. The intellect needed to become a doctor is lower than to become a scientist, and yet we have many more scientists than doctors.

  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:00PM (#57838770)

    "Find out more... after this message from iRobot."

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:01PM (#57838782)

    unlink health care from jobs

  • by jtara ( 133429 )

    Robot baristas have been here for a while, right? I hope they become more common.

    I hope they will have a program that will slap millennial customers who make everybody else wait while they engage in chit-chat (bro!) and take ten minutes to order when they haven't decided when they get to the front of the line, and have a zillion question about the ingredients. Also, a non-overridable function for the robot to not ask about the desire for "an alternative milk". And not throw indecipherable passive-aggressive

    • Also, a non-overridable function for the robot to not ask about the desire for "an alternative milk".

      I'm sorry when you grew up there were only two things (milk, sugar) you could put in coffee. That sounds sad. You probably think the only two pizza toppings are cheese and pepperoni as well.

      And not throw indecipherable passive-aggressive shade.

      Maybe if you just answered the damn question about which kind of cream-thing you wanted instead of launching into a diatribe, you wouldn't get shade?

      (Us Baby Boomer

  • " Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs."

    And they get hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money and they still go bankrupt and commit suicide in droves because they cannot compete on the market.

    It sure needs to adapt quite a bit more. If self-driving cars in big city traffic get along, I'm sure that trekkers and other machines would be able to find a field by themselves in the sticks.

    • And they get hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money and they still go bankrupt and commit suicide in droves because they cannot compete on the market.

      Maybe the US could implement Canada's supply management system it likes to bash so much, thus creating a farming sector that is profitable without any government subsidies?

    • And they get hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money and they still go bankrupt and commit suicide in droves because they cannot compete on the market.

      Big Ag gets most of those dollars.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:34PM (#57838962)
    were to automation [fortune.com] not outsourcing. To be fair outsourcing makes it that much more painful for the few jobs left. But I think it's pretty clear that our current system of wealth distribution isn't going to hold up. As much as people hate it when people get money they didn't earn (which is funny, since rent seeking on the properties your dad willed to you is A-OK) we're either gonna have to get over all that puritanical bullshit or get comfortable with a dystopia of 1% haves and 99% have-nots.

    Here's the thing folks, when 99% are the have nots you're probably not going to be one of the haves. But there's always pride. True story, buddy of mine's a basement dweller living at home in his 40s because he can't find a decent paying job (blue collar guy, couple of mental issues that means he can't hustle like you're expected to in 2018). If you ask him, he's middle class. And Taxed to the Max. I don't even know where he got the phrase, "Taxed to the Max", but he got it, and he's convinced he is, even though on the crappy wages he makes working part time he's not paying any taxes ourside of his vehicle registration on a 20 year old truck. This is what we're up against folks...
    • "We're" up against? I love how you automatically characterize your (imaginary) friend as The Other. I get the idea that's most of the problem. Maybe view people as people? Nah, right?
      • or even that special. I'm not the first person to notice that the working class refuses to think of themselves as such. [google.com] He's not the other, known the guy since 7th grade and he is and remains my closest friend.

        But you're strawmaning to avoid the issuea, which is that:

        a. Automation is going to put us all out of work and if we don't change how we distribute wealth everybody but a lucky few born into it will live like shit (think Indian reservations but on a global scale).

        b. Right wing politics don'
        • a. Automation is going to put us all out of work and if we don't change how we distribute wealth everybody but a lucky few born into it will live like shit (think Indian reservations but on a global scale).

          b. Right wing politics don't work, you know this and it makes you very uncomfortable. Stop reading Ayn Rand and hating yourself and start looking around at the deck stacked against you. You'll have an uncomfortable free years while you work out the demons put in your head by the billion dollar propaganda machines like Fox News and Rush but you'll be better for it.

          Point "b" is pretty correct but I think you're wrong on point "a". Actually there's a whole bunch of jobs we could create if we distributed the wealth better. Well, first off, even without that, we are just terrible at imagining the jobs of the future. Think of all the entertainment-related jobs we have today, which 50, 100, or 200 years nobody could imagine, and if they could (or you told them) they'd think of a society with so many of those jobs as some sort of immoral dystopia. Tell someone in 1700 that

  • by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:14PM (#57839182)

    And how tall does the mountain of machine-made-hamburgers get before the machine realizes nobody has the money to buy them?

    A very big change is right on the horizon, but I don't think anybody can even comprehend the consequences.

    My solution? \
    Human sized hampster wheels to generate the power for the machines. Automation AND green power.

    • by shess ( 31691 )

      And how tall does the mountain of machine-made-hamburgers get before the machine realizes nobody has the money to buy them?

      A very big change is right on the horizon, but I don't think anybody can even comprehend the consequences.

      My solution? \
      Human sized hampster wheels to generate the power for the machines. Automation AND green power.

      And it solves our obesity problem. You should kickstart this!

  • Somebody will have to maintain the robots....until the new generation of robotic robot maintainers is deployed...

  • by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Thursday December 20, 2018 @10:02PM (#57839968)

    1) Since the Industrial revolution (and really with every advance in production technology), fewer people are necessary to create things that people value. The phenomenon is the "consolidation of the production of value." For example, instead of 10 farmers producing enough for a subsistence living with primitive technology, one farmer can produce a lot with advanced tech. Instead of 100 people required to run a store that generates 20 million a year in revenue, with advanced tech it now only requires 10.

    2) So there's a "production pyramid": at the bottom, everyone makes everything they need. The next layer up it requires fewer people to make everything everyone needs. The next layer up even fewer.

    3) Thought experiment: imagine the top of the pyramid. One man (or woman) can make everything everyone needs. He owns all the productive capital. How to distribute money then?

    One thing to realize.
    i. People are necessary to create demand, for both goods and services, and the money to buy those goods and services. Without any people and no demand, money is worthless, and the single value creator is only making things for his own consumption.

    So: How to distribute money in the one creator system, at the top of the pyramid? How about 2 layers down? How about 50 layers down?

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