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Comment by darod | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how long it will take for this thought to fade from Steve's mind once he returns to SV. It's easy for people come to these realizations after getting outside of their comfort zone but just as easily return to the status quo. I think one of the biggest myths about tech in general is that it's here to help people. It's really not. It's job is to remove barriers to make workflows more efficient, typically to the detriment of people, as they generally are that barrier. Once a company gets a robot/computer to do what a person does it's next logical step is to layoff those workers. You don't have to go to your summer home to see people are having hard times. You just have to walk down Market Street.

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But this is a good thing.

In our Delhi office, each elevator has an attendant who's sole job is to push the button of the floor you want. This means less space in the lift for passengers, and lifts being taken out of commission because there's nobody to push the button.

Removing this job (by having the technology to allow passengers to select their floor themselves) means improvement for the users.

The same applies to shop checkouts - I'd far rather go through an automated checkout rather than deal with a person at a till, faster and less distracting from what I'm doing. Same thing with buying things from amazon rather than going to a legacy shop, watching a movie on Netflix rather than renting a video from blockbuster, or returning library books to a computer rather than a person.

The problem comes when those who lose the jobs lose out - the guy who's job is to push a button I can easilly push myself, or the taxi driver who's job vanishes when the computer does the driving instead. We deal with those issues by education (so people can do better jobs that aren't automated), and social safety nets.

If a robot can do your job, it's a terrible job. You may need it with our current economic system, But that isn't a good thing.

Self-service is a mixed bag. Yes, I like ATMs and Netflix (or Redbox). But I hate self-service at grocery stores especially if I'm buying produce etc. I'm not a big fan at home improvement stores much of the time either.

I completely agree. Bill Burr sums it up better than I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w

On the other hand I was listening to a podcast when I popped into boots to buy lunch. Fairly busy so there was a queue, I drew the short straw and got directed to the legacy kiosk. This means having to pause what I was listening too, lose concentration, and switch into conversation mode for no benefit at all.

Ikea is simply far easier to self-scan. Back in the olden days you could scan your shopping in the supermarket as you put it into the trolley. Rather irellevent now when nobody does a "weekly shop" in person any more but far better than the "put into conveyor". Go back far enough and you used to have to ask someone for every item you wanted, no self picking.

One of the problems with grocery stores specifically is that I buy a fair bit of stuff that isn't bar-coded, especially produce. I also guess that I'm not so much into sticking earphones in when I'm out and about. (And I also do a sort of weekly grocery shopping when I'm not traveling; no especially good delivery options in my area and not sure I would routinely use in any case.)

Funny; in more than one supermarket here, you're supposed to weigh the produce yourself using one of these[1] before getting to the register, even before the self-service checkout appeared.

[1] https://www.tradebit.com/usr/stock-photos/pub/9002/623344.jp...

Self-service checkout in any form is pretty much a good reason for me to avoid a store/chain unless they were really compelling in some other dimension.

Poor you having to interact with your environment and acknowledge briefly another human being. Perhaps we can invent an app for this.

While your comment is hilarious, i still think if cashiers at supermarkets weren't a thing that would make for a MORE enjoyable and healthy environement to interact with our peers

It'd be more enjoyable if there were no checkout at all.

>We deal with those issues by education (so people can do better jobs that aren't automated), and social safety nets.

However, there really are no social safety nets and the US continues to decrease investments in education year after year. Additionally, I rarely hear of companies reinvesting that money into educating their employees or the community.

>If a robot can do your job, it's a terrible job.

This is a bit of a stretch. Some people care more about efficiency, which it seems is the case with yourself. Others value service more and robots have yet to match the service quality of a human.

> Others value service more and robots have yet to match the service quality of a human.

That would imply that the robot cannot do the job, so it doesn't really contradict the parent's statement.

Service is far better at somewhere where I can order and pay from an iPad at the table or a kiosk, sometimes humans meet the levels of service I get from the robot - i.e immediate service without having to attract attention, not getting the wrong thing, but it's not universal.

The button pusher I think is a bad example. There are not many button pushers, for one, and secondly when we talk about the current industrial revolution, it's about machines replacing humans who are doing jobs with some skills. And there are many such jobs, like operating machinery in factories, and consequently many livelihoods depending on them.

Arguably replacing these jobs with machines is also too fast for any kind of proper transition. You can say "Move elsewhere then!" but as some have already pointed out, this is not always so simple. And, say that the machine revolution does happen world over, where exactly can you find jobs that match your skillsets? Don't forget the many others who will also try the same.

Absolutely, education and a social security net will help with the transition. But in reality, these two are often not an option for many people, and I doubt that the government can supply them in the same speed as the change itself. I fear that we'll have massive social unrest in the near future.

The root of the problem is the idea that you must be productively employed. It's a fallacy, and everything else that follows from it (like this notion that optimizations are bad because they result in fewer skilled jobs) are wrong for the same reasons.

Unfortunately, it's a fallacy with very strong social support. Including, ironically, these very people who are hurt most by it.

It might be a fallacy for you or I but there are some people who really struggle without the structure of a job in their lives.

And there are some people who can't cope with the structure of a job. both need to be dealt with - there are always structured jobs that can be done, volunteering at a museum for example.

Doesn't change the fact that if we can automate a job, espeicially if we can improve things at the same time, that's good.

We used to spend 90% of our energy growing enough food for our family to eat. This is far less now, and that allows us to devote more time to other pursuits. That's a good thing for mankind, as is automating any job.

If you don't think replacing people with robots is good, I assume you're against things like ansible, or kickstart, or computers in general.

If you don't think replacing people with robots is good

You are putting lots of words in my mouth there.

There seems to be an implicit assumption here that a job is the only way to give life structure. What is the evidence for that?

There is no such assumption, I did preface my comment with "you or I".

> It's job is to remove barriers to make workflows more efficient, typically to the detriment of people, as they generally are that barrier.

Another way of putting this is that tech is organised solely to meet the needs of the Capital class and no-one else.

Well, it is there to help people. It's there to help the people who are paying the tech company. This is often not you, and your interests are often not aligned with your employer.

"I think one of the biggest myths about tech in general is that it's here to help people."

It does... if it didn't, it wouldn't exist. Tech is a net positive for society. You typed that on a machine that gives you access to the world's information in seconds at minimal cost. Efficiencies drive down costs which benefits society as a whole. Can you imagine how much your computer/phone would cost if the production of it wasn't automated?

It's not as simple as that it's here because it 'helps' people. It's inevitable that tech comes about - it is possible and if you don't use it you are behind.

"Efficiencies drive down costs which benefits society as a whole."

Those same efficiencies remove people from their jobs. First blue collar jobs and later, as we will see, more technical and intricate fields. So the cost cutting yes is beneficial to the company and yes a potential side effect is prices decreasing but another side effect is more unemployment. For people that are highly educated, they potentially have the ability to transition to other fields. For people less educated, they're stuck. That doesn't necessarily benefit society as a whole.

I'd argue that reducing the chances of dying and increasing the chances of reproductive success are not the same as "helping people" in the sense of actually allowing people to live meaningful and fulfilled lives, which at the end of the day is all that matters.

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