Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

What happens when there are no human workers to service the robots when they fail? There's no such thing as a machine with moving parts lasting forever and I seriously doubt robotics is at a point where a robot can replace its own failing moving part nor replace a bad power supply or fried circuit board.

Anything involving a repetitive task like assembling a phone, pouring a beer, flipping a burger or folding a box is of course naturally going to at some stage be almost completely automated. You can't win in a fight with a machine when it comes to efficiency. However, good luck seeing a robot replace an electrician, a plumber, a web developer, a dentist, police officer or paramedic any time soon.

I think the whole, "robots are going to take our jobs" argument is a little blown out of proportion. People have been saying since the 50's that they're worried machines are going to take their jobs and it hasn't really happened on the large scale people like to think it has nor will in the next 50 years.

>What happens when there are no human workers to service the robots when they fail?

We can automate the service of robots.

>I think the whole, "robots are going to take our jobs" argument is a little blown out of proportion. People have been saying since the 50's that they're worried machines are going to take their jobs and it hasn't really happened on the large scale people like to think it has nor will in the next 50 years.

It "has happened", but it's just called automation of the industry. Service jobs have replaced a lot of the jobs in the industry.

What happens when the automation of the robot servicing fails? Do you have servicing of the servicing of the robots? Seems like a massive clusterfudge if you ask me.

There is a difference between automation and people losing jobs on a large scale. I'm not talking about automation making the life of a manual worker easier like it was during the 50's, I'm talking about people being replaced completely by robots. Even a lot of car production lines which were the first to embrace machine automation still employ manual workers to operate some of the equipment and ensure any downtime is minimal.

Even those self service kiosks at supermarkets require staff standing around because they fail often and people struggle to use them and prefer going through an actual register and being served. Those self-serve registers drive me nuts when it incorrectly weighs your groceries and tells you to wait for assistance.

What happens when the automation of the robot servicing fails? Do you have servicing of the servicing of the robots? Seems like a massive clusterfudge if you ask me.

The same thing that happens if we were talking about humans instead of robots. They are replaced.

> We can automate the service of robots.

Or just destroy/recycle them when they wear out, because whatever's available as a replacement is probably better/cheaper in some way than the old unit. In fact if you design them with that explicitly in mind, it becomes very efficient.

We do the same with computers and phones, it's usually better in our personal big pictures to just get a new unit.

I think you might be looking at this a little too black and white. Perhaps a robot won't replace an electrician, but an electrician with advanced technology at his/her disposal can do the work that in the past required several electricians. I think that going forward, we will see a smaller and smaller percentage of the population producing increasingly larger portions of the wealth. These producers will produce more than they can personally consume. The problem then becomes one of wealth distribution. We need to find a new way to structure capitalistic society so that wealth producers can be rewarded for their efforts, but those not able to as effectively produce wealth are still able to live well. Ideally we should implement a system that can scale all the way from where we are now, to the point where very few people are required to produce wealth.

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