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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's natural for humans to design the world for humans (though a good part of it now is designed for humans inside machines, ie cars).

Note, however, that most robots today actually operate in spaces designed for machines - ie, factories. Getting robots to operate in the "unstructured spaces" the article mentions is extremely difficult and hasn't been cost effective.

A large amount of gains in productivity have been achieved by substituting machines for humans, with "robots" just being the most programmable of machines. But very few of those gains involve direct substitution of machine movement for human movement - rather it's involved imposing structure on the whole productive environment so the rigid motion of a machine has a predictable result.

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Also of note, the societal backlash of replacing humans with robots has been pretty massive. So it's not just cost-effectiveness that's being balanced, but care with the workforce not to implement too many replacements too fast. The places where we've seen massive substitution are all industries where humans were in physical danger from the work being done. Risky manufacturing lines, etc.

I feel like that's starting to shift a bit where folks are realizing that more automation by robotics isn't actually reducing the potential workforce, it's just shifting it. Again though, it's up to the employers and manufacturing companies to really drive that point home.

It's an exciting time. :)

The places where we've seen massive substitution are all industries where humans were in physical danger from the work being done. Risky manufacturing lines, etc.

That doesn't really reflect the situation. Machines have been substituted for humans since at least Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin. Substituting machines for humans has had nothing to do with providing safety, rather it has been driven by the desire for increased productivity and thereby profits. Certainly, this increased has provided massive benefit to society along with various drawbacks. That's literally the history of the "industrial revolution".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

No no, you misunderstand me. I'm not saying it's FOR human safety...it's for profit. But the pushback on "losing jobs to machines" is less when the end-result is replacing human jobs that have a high degree of danger associated with them. Which is why, throughout history as well, we've seen larger adoption of automation via machines in those areas. The friction to do that replacement is lower, so we see it more often.

But the pushback on "losing jobs to machines" is less when the end-result is replacing human jobs that have a high degree of danger associated with them.

Well, OK, except for the long history of industrial automation that doesn't bear this out at all. There has resistance to automation from the English Luddites to Detroit Black Workers Union and beyond and arguments that automation is only OK safety is involved have not entered the picture that entire period.

Basically, there's never been a situation where public complaints stopped automation. It has proceeded as fast as technology allowed to the present.

EP Thompson is the reference for early automation and the luddites but it's hard to give a reference for a negative.

If you have any reference for situation where public sentiment limited automation, I'd love to see them. Because it sounds like you are mistakenly thinking the world actually works according to the vague headlines one see sees periodically.

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