Boston Dynamics robot doing heavy warehouse work.

submitted by Orangutan from (gfycat.com)

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]HurkaDurka 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

An easy short term fix would be to reduce the American work week to 35 hours. In a vacuum, that would add 12.5% more jobs to the economy. Companies will be able to lower prices since productivity will increase from the automation. And maybe the gov can steal a little less in taxes from the working classes so we have more disposable income too.

Edit: and new jobs will evolve alongside the automation industry. Just like all technological unemployment from the past created new job fields as well. Also, who doesn't want a shorter work week??

[–]Zombi 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Shorter work weeks equal less pay, though. I'm guessing companies could shell out higher wages from what they save through automation, but something tells me large corps aren't going to just willingly do that without a fight.

I know there have been many jobs have been changed by technology, but it's always been to aide human beings before, not completely replace them. I'm just worried about how this equals out, really. I don't see everyone suddenly having the knowledge and training to repair all of these bots, specially the workers that they'll be replacing (wharehouse workers mostly as well as many white collars jobs). If 100 people are replaced by 100 robots, I can't imagine there will be a need for 100 new technicians to oversee/repair them.

It's just worrying and it doesn't feel like there's much of a conversation going on about it.