[nostrademons]

I think de-globalization is a long-term boon for automation (at least in the U.S), but it's not going to operate at the speed needed to replace 3 billion workers dropping out of the labor force. Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right, and the pace of progress is typically uneven and unpredictable. Long-term, it'll be great for the salaries of software engineers, robotics engineers, material scientists, process engineers, etc. Short-term, expect higher prices and shortages. Until we find ways to build things with fewer people, we will just have fewer things.

I'm also not optimistic about the American populace's ability to deal with shortages without rioting.

[SkyMarshal]

> Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right

A year ago I spoke to an Apple engineer who works on their manufacturing processes, who corroborated that. He said the reason they aren't fully automated is because human workers are still better at repurposing to new assembly lines making new devices than robots are.

[ryandrake]

They are still better, but no doubt teams of people are working on improving automation to the point where they are not better.

I believe, on a long enough timeframe, every product that can be produced and every service that can be performed will be done by automation/AI/robotics. It's the inevitable destination of the tracks we are currently rolling on. 1. An advancement in automation is made where something can now be done automatically that previously required humans. 2. Those humans no longer have a job. 3. Some of those humans re-train for a job not yet automate-able. 4. Goto 1. This cycle will repeat for generations and generations, probably for centuries. The jobs at the bottom of the skill pyramid will slowly be taken over by automation, and new high-skill, high-complexity jobs will be created towards the top of the pyramid. Humans will constantly be scrambling to get footholds higher and higher up the pyramid, before automation gobbles those jobs up too. The end destination: self-creating automation that can make and do anything. At which point, there is nothing left for humans to do.

If, by that point, we still have not gotten past our primitive economic system based on money-for-labor and private ownership of the means of production, then humanity will simply no longer function.

[astee]

There is a lot of work where a human body + mind is cheaper and easier than automation and likely will be for the foreseeable future. We will need lots of human labor until you have embodied robots similarly adaptable to a human at <= $20/hr.

Automation puts downward pressure on wages/working conditions. But we must also consider globalization pushback and aging population pyramids that put upward pressure on wages.

Conclusion? Varies.