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It is just fundamentally strange that you are including gig economy work in a discussion of automation. That isn't automation! The people shopping for you are not automatons just because your interaction with them is mediated by an app! They are doing your chores for you and have less time with their families so you can have more time with yours.

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It’s heavily automated where I shop. I know because I write software for the robots at some of these customers and 3PLs. I watch the robots do their thing on a big board.

Right, the human+machine system is providing the scalable and convenient service, but the "human" part is usually some minimum-wage or gig worker. This kind of automation is helping the haves, but not so much the have-nots.

I guess countries are becoming more of what they already were: the US gets more unequal and exploitative. Other, more socialist countries are getting more so. China is getting totalitarian using automated facial recognition and censorship.

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