Comment by vouwfietsman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vouwfietsman | Hacker News Reader

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The article makes a good argument throughout, that automated work is often sold as complete replacement, but frequently introduces more work around the automation. Also that their is a real psychological cost to marrying (social) life and technology too closely. These are fair points.

However, the article also berates self-checkout systems, which everybody I know perceives as a net benefit to their daily lives. It goes on to pretend that filling in a form on a webapp to send your leave hours to HR is somehow "doing HR’s job", omitting the obvious time savings, persistence, and error reduction for everybody involved. Finally, the article of course freely shows us the AI effect [0] as if it is a novel insight, by quoting a "technology critic", whatever that means, to tell us that actually nearly all achievements surrounding AI are just VC hype and mechanical-turk type shams.

I don't get why everything always needs to be so polarized. When we invented plastic all of a sudden everybody started doing everything with plastic, even if it did not make sense [1]. After a couple decades, some uses of plastic stick, others don't. Its natural selection on a cultural/industrial level. Why can't we allow automation/AI to go through the same process, without pretending it's somehow making our lives worse, or treating it like it's magic.

Dressing the misbehavior of industrial capitalism as a failure of technology is intellectually dishonest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect [1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/393713192402286646/

Thanks for summarizing 3,400 words. The piece was so rambly.

I for one absolutely love self-checkout at groceries, self-checkin at airports, etc. The parallel processing benefit is obvious, and ignorance is bliss when it comes to operator errors. And the more such self-service procedures become mainstream, the better we as a species become in reducing those errors. As a frustrated Android user in 2010, I used to think the general population wouldn't be able to figure out smartphones. Boy was I wrong.

> I don't get why everything always needs to be so polarized.

It is polarized since people are looking at how it may affect themselves rather than society as a whole. If there a 10% job loss is projected over their working life, they are concerned that they will be in the 10%. Even if their job is secure, they may be concerned that the threat of automation or displaced workers from other fields will force their wages to stagnate or decline. It is difficult to argue these worries away since they affect individuals and no one knows how automation will affect any given person in the long term.

Granted, some of the concerns are about the nature of the job rather than the material loss. Consider something like teaching, where there will be no real substitute for people in the foreseeable future. That being said, what teachers do will change. There will be more emphasis on technical skills and technologically mediated communications. In a profession which attracts people who want to help others, the increasing role of automation will likely be seen as a drawback rather than a benefit.

Right, those are good points. But the article is from a blog that claims the following: "Futures of Work is a blog offering radical and critical thinking on ongoing and emerging issues associated with work and employment."

It feels unproductive to me that a blog sporting such a claim looks at the automation problem, and instead of critiquing our cultural connections of work, wealth, and value, critiques the automation systems trying to improve the future. I think being a luddite is neither critical, radical or a response to anything that is emerging. Its a knee jerk reaction based on fear, like you are saying.

>self-checkout systems

There's no actual automation in grocery store style self-checkout. All they did was take the same laser scanners that the cashiers had been using since the early 1990s and replace the cashier with the customer (after adding a scale to try and cut down on theft). True automation would be something like the Amazon Go grocery stores where you just fill your cart with items and leave and it figures out how much to charge you. It's the same thing with automated airport parking payment systems - some make you stop, insert the ticket, then insert your cash or credit card (not really automation, just replacing the employee with the customer) whereas other read your EZ-Pass or other toll tag as you just drive through the exit (actual automation).

I think we're familiar with different systems. The worst systems I know require you to hold items in front of the scanner at the end of the store, more or less doing the work of the cashier yourself (though this still has obvious time-saving benefits).

One level up from this is that you take the scanner with you in the store, and so the process of shopping and checking out is combined into one, again here the benefit is time savings.

The best systems I know allow you to just drop your items in a bagging area and it is automatically scanned, and then you pay. Sure, you still pay manually, but paying is a minor part of checkout, and so most of the checkout is automated.

The systems like amazon are another step above that (skipping the presenting and paying of items), but for me checkout is already a much better experience than it was.

The point is not really that we can't do better, the point is that self-checkout is working, and working well, right now.

EDIT: To get back to the question: is anything actually being automated? I would suggest so, yes. Although maybe its not directly clear, previously the cashier was doing the work of validating that you are paying the correct amount for the correct items, and that you have in fact payed, and so are allowed to take the items home with you. Now that work is shared between me and a couple machines, obviously some of the responsibility, and so work, has transferred from the cashier to the machine, because otherwise the responsibility would completely be with me, and I could take the whole store home with me without paying anything!

> "the article also berates self-checkout systems, which everybody I know perceives as a net benefit to their daily lives."

You don't know me, but I want to provide a counter anecdote. My wife and I are both people that see self-checkout as a net negative. The error rate is just too high. They'd be fine if the error rate was low enough so that delays or required assistance was rare. It's not rare.

The best shopping experience is when there are plenty of human cashiers and plenty of lines open.

I understand your position if this is the case for you, perhaps you are suffering to a worse version of the self checkout systems I am familiar with.

For instance, for me to understand your problem I would have to know what you mean with "error rate", which I am sure I would not have to ask you if we shared the same implementation.

Polarization helps with the click count. Intentionally or not. My unsolicited advice: When one finds a diamond in a pile of dirt, focusing on the diamond seems beter use of ones energy than the alternative.

>Dressing the misbehavior of industrial capitalism as a failure of technology is intellectually dishonest.

It's intellectually dishonest to separate technology from the manner it is used. You introduce a powerful new technology, and people will use it to expand their powers, whether or not it's being used in the way the inventor intended.

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