It's not as bad, nor as good, as you think

> A robot or algorithm can only “take” a job if a human builds a robot/algorithm capable of it. A human can only build such a robot/algorithm if they have at least some vague notion that it won’t wildly hurt their fellow citizens, or if they are a sociopath.

Or, you know, if there’s profit to be made by it.

Besides the “hurt” would never register as something directly done by one human to another (the programmer just does his/her job as best as they can, it’s not their fault if the new process costs jobs).

And even if there’s any hint of self-doubt about the human cost of what the developer does, there are tons of excuses to cover it up (e.g.

Tons of factories have been outsourced to China or wherever with the same ease, leaving behind ghosts of ex-industrial towns and hurting tons of people in the process (who in their late 40s or 50s can hardly find another job), and those profiting from it do it without blinking twice.

The “Banality of Evil” book (and tons of psychological experiments like the Milgram experiment) showed that it doesn’t take a sociopath or a some special monster to “hurt another human”, just someone doing their job when its socially perceived as OK is enough. Not that we didn’t already knew that from real life experience…