[pedrocx486]

I worked at a company last year (specifically their RPA sector) that one of the projects we got was create a "robot" to automate certain tasks within a client.

Later after we delivered it, we learned that project alone was the reason the client cut 700 low level positions. A single "robot" could do in an afternoon what 700 people did in a week. (Was/is a pretty large company.)

The words from my manager still echo in my mind: "If we think of the "ethical" aspect of it, we wouldn't have our own jobs."

[dgb23]

The problem is not that jobs get automated away. Efficiency in of itself is a good thing.

The problem is that the gained efficiency is often not used to improve the lives of all (former) participants: There is little responsibility towards employees and customers. Businesses are not seen as communities, neither by employers nor by employees.

Leaders, owners, investors, employers and other powerful actors profit disproportionally, because their decisions are not tied to a holistic responsibility but only to financial metrics (which are also directed by them; a whole other problem).

There are also actors with higher (or sufficient?) ethical standards that will invest efficiency gains like you describe to educate and train their employees or at least give them the financial means. This inspires loyalty and trust.

I'm longing to hear more about such cases.

[virgilp]

I don't have a moral dilemma about my work cutting those kinds of jobs; it's busywork, their existence doesn't improve humanity. We're better off with something like UBI than paying people to do boring stuff that they don't really need to do.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I'm not saying it won't be the right move eventually, but that was 700 people who were getting paid for busywork who now aren't. Today I'd say there's still a dilemma.

[Closi]

You can stop any investment or operational improvement with that mindset though.

Should we give our gardeners a lawnmower? Nah that would result in redundancies, leave them with their nail scissors.

[greenshackle2]

If you apply the reversal test, the question becomes, in a world where these busywork jobs didn't exist, should we create them?

Or, taking a step back, if you ask "how many busywork jobs should there be?", it would be surprising if the answer is "exactly the number we have right how". So it seems either you should want to eliminate busywork jobs, or create more of them.

To me the "dilemma" smells like status quo bias.

I will say though, status quo bias is not all bad, there is some value to stability, but I'm not convinced it is the role of businesses to provide stability, that seems like a role for government.

[jfk13]

> that seems like a role for government

But then you'll have to deal with all the people who complain about government interference in the free market.

[lanstin]

It wouldn't be surprising if the dynamics of the human society pushed the number to the current number as being optimally stable for society. Too few busywork jobs and you have large crowds of protesters; to many busyworks jobs and the sectors of the economy that are growing in response to new opportunities are starved of labor. Not really stating a belief but just want to point out that in complex homeostatic systems it there are often dynamics pushing certain numbers to where they indeed are. Certainly true for body temperature and blood pH but no reason in principal not to be true of certain things about economics either.

[zentiggr]

Society and people's jobs / skills can be shifted rather more easily than bodily systems, though. Just look at the difference in the average day's tasks from 1820 to today.

Provide the right kinds of support, retraining, or yes, UBI, and we're no longer talking about people going hungry when they lose a menial RSI job. We're talking about people whose struggle to make ends meet can change into doing something that feels like a step up in the world.

Having the means to choose your employment is a HUGE thing for a lot of people. Been there, and I can feel the huge weight off my shoulders knowing that if for some reason my current job goes away, that I am certain I can find something comparable.

[true_religion]

Think about how many secretaries and clerks that Microsoft Office put out of work.

On the other hand, isn’t it better that everyone can type their own reports and check spelling and grammar themselves via code?

[SketchySeaBeast]

It is, and that's why it's complicated. I'm not saying it's the wrong move, but there's still a dilemma there.

[jfk13]

>> isn’t it better that everyone can type their own reports and check spelling and grammar themselves via code?

> It is...

Is it really? Seems like an awful lot of stuff just doesn't get checked any longer. The "checking" done by MS Word et al is no substitute for the eye of a skilled human.

[untog]

> We're better off with something like UBI

I strongly agree... but we don’t have UBI. So for me it’s still a moral dilemma. That person is still out of a job and might be out of a job for a very long time if the economy is weak. Yes, there are answers to this problem like UBI, but as someone living in the US I can’t honestly say I can see it being implemented here any time soon. So my work has the potential to devastate someone else’s life.

(and yes, I know, I know, if I quit someone else will take my job and it’ll all happen anyway. Doesn’t mean it isn’t still a moral dilemma)

[virgilp]

But UBI won't just happen by itself. It needs a few things:

- Work actually getting done (through automation) - i.e. the "supply side" needs to be there

- People that demand it/ see it as necessary solution to _some_ problems (it won't just appear if there's no problem to be solved)

For me, it's simple: does it move society in the right direction? Yes, it creates some transient problems - but progress always does.

[untog]

That’s a very easy thing to say when you’re not the one on the receiving end of these “transient problems”, though.

Would you tell a homeless person to their face that their poverty is a shame but it’s the price we need to pay for progress? And that you don’t know with any certainty when positive change will happen?

[virgilp]

I have another argument that might be more convincing for you: automation makes things cheaper, so by definition it creates wealth for society. Now, you can argue that said wealth is unfairly distributed - and indeed wealth distribution itself is a thorny subject. But it is also a completely orthogonal one! I don't think we should stop from creating wealth until we find a "satisfactory" way to distribute it.... That feels like it would be a very bad idea to me.

[virgilp]

There's a difference between being needlessly cruel and believing something is necessary and good, despite it creating some problems for some people for a while.

[knodi123]

> We're better off with something like UBI

Okay - but are we replacing them with UBI?

It feels analogous to ripping a person off of life support while saying "some day, you'll get an organ transplant. I prefer that to keeping you alive mechanically, strapped to a bed."

[rbecker]

Automation makes UBI more politically and economically feasible. I.e. no-one could reasonably call for UBI when 95% of the population were farmers.

[ip26]

I wonder sometimes, in particular with smaller construction jobs. Work that can be done either by an overweight guy in a Bobcat, or a shovel crew of five to ten, in about the same time.

I wonder if the Bobcat is really that much cheaper. And the construction workers in photos from a hundred years ago always look much healthier & happier than the guy in the Bobcat.

[pydry]

If the client could cut 700 low level positions with automation then they were probably treating human beings like robots.

[meritt]

Yeah, imagine a world where each employee had a team of highly trained specialists ensuring they had absolutely everything they need to do their job, and if they became sick at 2am on a Saturday, multiple people get woken up to take care of them. When the CEO parades investors around on the assembly floor, those employees are shined up, their capabilities are demonstrated, and they are showcased as the pinnacle of why their company is the best.

Low level employees would be lucky to be treated like robots.

[oh_sigh]

If low level people were as productive as 700 other low level people they wouldn't be low level people.

[SketchySeaBeast]

No, they'd be superhuman.

[dkarl]

Society was rich enough to support those 700 people, and now it's richer. Should be good news for them. It's a huge challenge getting to that point as a society, but there are also very rapidly evolving attitudes towards the problem (much more readiness to acknowledge that it is a problem, to start with.) I feel optimistic that this could be solved in the next hundred years.

[rwbhn]

Curious about how you feel about the number of people needed to farm 100 acres of, say corn, today vs 200 years ago. Was all the automation applied to that problem unethical?

[jfk13]

When you consider what it's doing to the land and environment, maybe so.