Where's the automation?

[Sean Hayden]

Why is it taking so long? It seems to me that many, if not most of my dealings with businesses of all types would be greatly improved by removing the human element. From the hardware store to grabbing a burger I think a machine could do a better job. The exceptions of course being where a hardware store still employs experts for example. Of course even then tech savvy individuals could make use of expert systems to get the help they need.

Are the costs just too high? What's slowing us down? Outside of manufacturing automation for all but the simplest tasks is virtually non-existent. What gives?

Do you support automation or not, why?

[laklak]

Gotta keep the proles occupied with work, otherwise they'll steal all our shit.

[Rum]

It is happening out of sight so as not to frighten us!

[JimC]

Well, in some areas of education, students doing tests on-line that are automatically marked is all the go...

[Sean Hayden]

That's true, but I'd put it in the category of the simplest tasks I talked about above. Shoot, Scantrons have been around forever and where multiple choice exams are concerned it's hard to see much difference that would matter anyway.

As for keeping people employed, we really just need to keep them spending right? Ideally we would move their employment to other industries not as well served by machines. In any case businesses should be willing to pay more taxes after automation that they'll definitely recover through increased spending. They're a creative bunch, the possibilities are limitless.

[Svartalf]

Sorry, but I'm most inefficient cash desk operator, and prefer people at the cash desk when doing my groceries rather than the new do it yourself ones some stores are installing

[laklak]

Yeah spending is the key. We need some sort of make work, not too much of it, few hours a day a couple days a week. Making widgets, or whatever. Then we get paid. Other people make schmoogles, others make ribistabises. Then they go spend their money on the pizza and beer and stereos and cell phones the automated world provides them. The widgets and what not are recycled by the factories into raw materials for the next shift. Provides structure to their lives, and the cell phones keep getting better and better.

[Sean Hayden]

So it's Svartalf, he's the problem!

[Svartalf]

I'm not the problem, I provide employment to the not so skilled

[Sean Hayden]

That is increasingly not the case.

[Svartalf]

well, that's the problem, the shops suppressing cashdesk jobs without reducing the prices, basically they are making a profit by forcing the customer to do a job he shouldn't be doing in the first place, or should be indemnified through lower prices. I'm not giving my patronage to such stores.

[laklak]

It's increasingly common. Sometimes I prefer it, if I've only got a couple of things and they're marked.

[Sean Hayden]

Yeah, they don't bother me but they don't go far enough either. Why even have store fronts? Are they necessary? Think of the space we could save. A trip to the store amounts to picking things up at a window. (It should be better than that but you get the idea) Of course they may opt to have deliveries only, and cut out what would have amounted to nothing but an automated warehouse anyway. This would reduce driving dramatically and we could find creative ways to use the new space for public transport to and from more meaningful activities.

But what about window shopping? Well, you can still have it. But without all the waste. Think movie theater for shopping...

[cronus]

It's slow take up at first. I recall when silicon chips came on the scene in the early eighties and there was talk of it changing the world, even discussion about the runaway absurdist surveillance state that has indeed developed. Nothing happened until the late 90s. So although the parts are there for the robotics revolution it is still on the slow end of the uptake curve, experimental stage. Give it a couple of decades. We are in a period of gradual transition and it is only the beginning, compared to the avalanche of change that is bound to come later - if only a fraction of the claims for AI hold water. Ain't seen nothing yet. Don't fight last years war.

[Rum]

I think you have this wrong. The world has already been transformed by the microchip and the computer. We do things these days - and take them for granted - that would have been impossible 25 years ago. These include medical, technological, scientific and engineering tasks and processes. The internet has resulted in a sea change in the way research and development for all sorts of things take place.

All this has required 'automation' which is what the OP is about. Sequencing genes is just one small example.

I suspect the process will continue and probably speed up. And it isn't inevitable that AI, which is what you are talking about, rather than automation as such, will create the doom-laden 'avalanche' you refer to. Like all technology, it will depend on how it is employed.