the domain is interesting, but I worry about the long-term effects of maximizing efficiencies (read: automation) forpeople who rely on jobs in that industry.
It's like trying to un-discover nuclear weapons, once it's out there you can't go back. Things are going to get more efficient, more automated, and those jobs will be lost. It's not a matter of "if", but "when".
What we need to do is to figure out ways to cope with the change. Find tasks that these workers can do that allows them to earn a living, experiment with universal income to maybe one day not need everyone to work, fund education programs so these people can learn to do something different, provide some safety nets so that these people have time to cope with the changes.
We need to adapt as society, not pretend that this technology doesn't exist.
yes to this.
Low skill, low knowledge, repetitive work is key target for automation.
Fast food workers wouldn't have large downstream effects. Automated truck driving would though. There are likely entire towns right off of highways that depend on humans passing through daily - restaurants, repair shops, etc. If automated trucks don't stop anymore, a town could literally be a ghost town.
Partially true, many of them went to Mexico. Import of partially completed goods, as well as automation of assembly, continue to drive overall manufacturing output in the USA. But many jobs have been exported. A recent high-profile example: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/carrier-plant-movin... and a study discussing overall impact to jobs: https://www.epi.org/publication/heading_south_u-s-mexico_tra...
I can see the automation and analytics helping staff appropriately and offer more options for efficiency and waste reduction.
I hate talking to machines, I hate talking to automated voice menus instead of getting actual assistance from a human being. I hate ordering stuff online and dealing with slight one off cases. The google Ai assistant had me cringing for weeks. I especially have a deep hatred for self checkout lines. They can all burn in hell.
That's just something people think so that they don't have to feel empathy for people who lose their jobs to automation. It's kind of an internal excuse.
The reality is that not everyone is re-trainable. And if someone could easily get a job in customer service, or some other marginally better situation, they already wouldn't be working at a fast food joint.
In addition, many fast-food jobs are temporary/seasonal. A high school kid can get a six-month stint at MacDowell's to pay for car insurance over the summer. A call center isn't going to take him in and train him knowing that he's going to bolt come September.
If a system can pinpoint a prospect is close to onboarding, and customer service rep is a great closer, the software could pass the prospect off to the "closer". The same could be said for keeping a customer who is on the fence from leaving. All of the sudden, a highly skilled closer has data and metrics attributable to the company's bottom line, and in theory, someone like this should become a high priced asset.
In some instances, could automation actually greatly increase the salary dispersion in certain low wage fields?
Right, they can compete with all the other displaced workers for the #1 position most likely to be outsourced.
Hell, many Targets don't even have a customer service desk anymore. They demolish them and assign the workload of both sales and returns to a random cashier.
A lot of people are not qualified for skilled work and will never transcend entry-level fast-food jobs. If you take away those tasks that keep them productively occupied, it might be a good time to start buying stock in industries related to prison management.
A key feature of the times we live in is that knowledge is ubiquitous. If an idea becomes known and understood to be feasible, and it serves a useful purpose, you can't hide it from existence. If your restaurant doesn't capitalize on these tools to improve efficiency, another one likely will. This might mean that your restaurant gets be out-competed by a better product elsewhere AND your workers will be out of a job.
Trying to freeze a system that works at a given time is becoming more and more difficult as we advance our knowledge and technology. This paradigm of rapid evolution has been playing out since the industrial revolution, and seems to be accelerating with time.
Maybe it ends badly for us in the macro sense, we'll see. I feel for the folks that can't evolve and get left behind, but I'm not sure how to help them. Resisting the change probably won't work.
I guess if you aren't in one of those areas, and you have a business that hires a lot of low income people, times will be good, but like you I don't think the rest of the market can take up the slack; there are only so many people who are willing to pay for laundering.