Ethics of automation & efficiency-based roles

[Deleted member 4461]

Note: This is just a thought I wanted to bring to ERA. I don't intend to judge people for their responses here, and I'd prefer to keep the whole thing civil.

So, I'm curious to hear from people who work on making organizations more lean, or work on automation products, or companies who are cornering the market in general.

The ultimate end of these types of projects inevitably mean that people will lose their jobs. Removing redundant roles, automating tasks that need humans, or creating a product that outstrips the competition by miles all helps to make your company more money...

...But also causes a ton of people to lose their jobs. I think my perspective is that the government/companies should take care of people who find themselves unemployed. But seeing that they aren't going to, what do you think people in automation or efficiency-based roles should do?

 

[Deleted member 22630]

Unfortunately you can't stop progress, so positive thinking, really shitty regardless though.

 

[Mekanos]

The workers should own the means of production.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

But seeing that they aren't going to, what do you think people in automation or efficiency-based roles should do?

Click to shrink...

Their job.

 

[Foffy]

Create a social framework where the natural introduction of technology into labor production isn't a conflict of actual human survival value. So long as that equation is there, all progress with be one of violence.

UBI is a start. The only "ethic" we have in capitalistic frameworks is "increase production, minimize cost." This is currently happening swimmingly, so any problems we see surface from this come from that framework in full.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

It's the governments job to solve problems like unemployment, not individuals with good idea's.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Yes humans will keep finding ways to optimize the use of resources. What's the alternative? Not curing cancer so people don't run out of jobs? Using more plastic than necessary? Less efficient food production? Waste electricity? Make homes that don't last longer?

There is enough stuff to do to keep everyone employed, but it's for governments to get projects going and help people be in a position to contribute. Don't put that responsibility in the free market's hands.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

Yes humans will keep finding ways to optimize the use of resources. What's the alternative? Not curing cancer so people don't run out of jobs? Using more plastic than necessary? Less efficient food production? Waste electricity? Make homes that don't last longer?

Click to shrink...

That's a good point, that's very fair 🤔

 

[DBT85]

This is something that has happened and will continue to happen for thousands of years from the first time someone got an animal to plough their field or carry their wares to the next town rather than using manual labour. There are more and more people on the planet and more and more jobs becoming more automated, yet we aren't at 50% unemployment.

The world adapts, technology evolves, people retrain or retire and now jobs are created in fields that didn't exist 2 decades before.

It absolutely sucks at that time for those people it affects though.

 

[Oliver James]

I think there would always be jobs you cannot automate so people will just move on to those. Or they can move into doing the automation themselves.

 

[karnage10]

Personally i think automation is always the way to go because I find deplorable for people to do physical repetitve jobs that usually for low pay that heavily decrease QoL, specially at old age.
Personaly a strong social net can be made that these people are slowly moved to other types of jobs. After all despite automation removing jobs, technology also creates others.

I'll say the biggest challenges for this are

• political willpower -> most social nets are usually seen as giving money to lazy people instead of giving money to starving/poor people
• education -> as society becomes more automated, complex issues become the usual. This requires peopel to have some degree of udnerstanding of the world around them as well as incentive to learn
• robust worker rights -> this stops companies from trampling their workers.

For example in Portugal theres exist a severe lack of responsibility of the companies towards diseases originated by work. with state paying most of teh damaged caused by the work. This means companies don't take the protection of their employees very seriously.

 

[Hyun Sai]

But who are we going to insult when the automaton tells us they don't have any PS5 before we even ask the question ?

 

[Deleted member 22630]

But who are we going to insult when the automaton tells us they don't have any PS5 before we even ask the question ?

Click to shrink...

Skynet hears your complaints and has the solution!

 

[FliX]

Everything we sell at my company and many others like it is coded for our customers as saving time, being more efficient, enabling more innovation, freeing up resources and such.
We go to great pain to emphasise that these freed up resources (I.e. human workers) can be reallocated to other better uses.
but its Clear to me the decision makers that make the call at the end of the day have headcount reduction in their mind. It just is one of the largest expenses for most companies.
As for my part in these machinations. I'm but a very small cog in the machine operating within the capitalist system we have. There's only so much I can do on a day to day basis.

 

[Deleted member 22630]

Everything we sell at my company and many others like it is coded for our customers as saving time, being more efficient, enabling more innovation, freeing up resources and such.
We go to great pain to emphasise that these freed up resources (I.e. human workers) can be reallocated to other better uses.
but its Clear to me the decision makers that make the call at the end of the day have headcount reduction in their mind. It just is one of the largest expenses for most companies.
As for my part in these machinations. I'm but a very small cog in the machine operating within the capitalist system we have. There's only so much I can do on a day to day basis.

Click to shrink...

If you don't someone else will.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

Their job.

Click to shrink...

Which is fair. I certainly don't intend to judge people for it.

Everything we sell at my company and many others like it is coded for our customers as saving time, being more efficient, enabling more innovation, freeing up resources and such.
We go to great pain to emphasise that these freed up resources (I.e. human workers) can be reallocated to other better uses.
but its Clear to me the decision makers that make the call at the end of the day have headcount reduction in their mind. It just is one of the largest expenses for most companies.
As for my part in these machinations. I'm but a very small cog in the machine operating within the capitalist system we have. There's only so much I can do on a day to day basis.

Click to shrink...

Also fair. But yeah, that's a perfect example of what I was thinking about.

 

[subpar spatula]

Create automation services that "accidentally" create more jobs.

 

[Baji Boxer]

Automation is inevitable, and it's how society adapts that makes it good or bad, imo.

 

[Hollywood Duo]

We'll just add a bunch of useless administrative positions to the automation sector

 

[Clefargle]

Tax automated products on a per-job-replaced basis and funnel that money towards retraining, unemployment, and student loans

 

[samoyed]

The point of automation/innovation is so people can work less.

Companies not reducing the amount of hours you need to do but firing you in pursuit of profit is a culture/governance/capitalism problem.

E.g. a machine is invented to reduce your team of three's labor needs by 50%. Your boss buys one machine, fires two of you, then keeps the third employee instead of reducing all your hours by 50%, maintaining the same output but putting two people on the streets and recouping the wages that would've been spent on your teammates in order to recoup the cost of the machine.

Capitalist theory says your boss is in their right to do this in the interest of profit maximization. Socialist theory says the three workers should collectively own the machine (and the company) and elect to reduce labor needs but keep everyone employed.

All R&D into automation has the ultimate goal of making capitalism unsustainable, because robots don't consume products. If there are no wages, there are no consumers, and so there is no profit, no matter how efficient or automated your workforce is.

 

[Quixzlizx]

This has been happening since hunter-gatherer societies started transitioning into sedentary agricultural societies.

The problem isn't with efficiency, it's with how society treats people.

 

[Deleted member 7051]

I'd argue that automation is itself ethical because it allows us to choose to work. I mean, how many people work because they have to rather than because they want to? With the proper systems in place to ensure everyone has sufficient income to cover basic expenses, a world where most work is automated means people will pursue work which fulfils them or pays for luxuries like videogames as an example.

Wouldn't that be a more ethical world than one where you have to work several dead end minimum wage jobs just to pay your rent? A machine can take orders at McDonald's but you're worth more than that.

 

[daveo42]

This is why Universal Basic Income will be more and more a talking point in the future. If every job is automated, who is going to have a job to actually buy the widgets that are produced? Without people to buy the widgets, companies crumble and society as we know it dissolves. UBI is totally a thing we will end up seeing in our lifetimes as more jobs are phased out and replaced.

 

[mAcOdIn]

For it to be unethical to cause someone to lose their job it would have to be proven that it is, umm, a mandatory prerequisite to being ethical for a person having to work which I also don't believe. I don't really think ethics come into it because I don't think people should have to work anyways.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

The point of automation/innovation is so people can work less.

Companies not reducing the amount of hours you need to do but firing you in pursuit of profit is a culture/governance/capitalism problem.

E.g. a machine is invented to reduce your team of three's labor needs by 50%. Your boss buys one machine, fires two of you, then keeps the third employee instead of reducing all your hours by 50%, maintaining the same output but putting two people on the streets and recouping the wages that would've been spent on your teammates in order to recoup the cost of the machine.

Capitalist theory says your boss is in their right to do this in the interest of profit maximization. Socialist theory says the three workers should collectively own the machine (and the company) and elect to reduce labor needs but keep everyone employed.

All R&D into automation has the ultimate goal of making capitalism unsustainable, because robots don't consume products. If there are no wages, there are no consumers, and so there is no profit, no matter how efficient or automated your workforce is.

Click to shrink...

One question I have is - why are we certain that people would choose that everyone stays employed?

 

[Deleted member 22630]

One question I have is - why are we certain that people would choose that everyone stays employed?

Click to shrink...

How it's always been, identity, value tied to occupation/wages, etc... but samoyed can give a better answer than I.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

How it's always been, identity, value tied to occupation/wages, etc... but samoyed can give a better answer than I.

Click to shrink...

Well, specifically I mean that people already dislike their co-workers for any given reason. If they see a benefit to themselves that someone else is laid off - less competition, they don't think the person works hard enough, etc., they may choose that the one or two people lose their jobs once their job becomes redundant.

 

[samoyed]

One question I have is - why are we certain that people would choose that everyone stays employed?

Click to shrink...

If ownership of the means of production is socialized then it is self evident. The boss almost never fires themselves. Workers in a co-op are their own bosses.

That said, socialism doesn't mean interpersonal politics goes away. If worker A and B don't like worker C they may vote to buy out or muscle out C, though C usually can defend themselves if the ownership laws are well designed. If they cannot defend themselves then the co-op laws are probably poorly designed, just like how at-will employment is poor design (for workers, it's very good for owners).

In a strictly co-op based socialism model, every worker owns equity in their co-op. To get rid of workers who have equity but still reclaim the equity, the ones that want to oust them have to affect a buyout. That is usually how it's designed. I guess theoretically you can have a model that can "fire" a worker but allow them to retain their equity which is pretty weird but I guess it's possible. Then the fired worker will either have to live off the dividends or sell it to someone else.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

If ownership of the means of production is socialized then it is self evident. The boss almost never fires themselves. Workers in a co-op are their own bosses.

That said, socialism doesn't mean interpersonal politics goes away. If Worker A and B don't like worker C they may vote to buy out or muscle out C, though C usually can defend themselves if the ownership laws are well designed.

Click to shrink...

Okay, yeah, that's what I had been wondering about!

 

[Deleted member 22630]

Well, specifically I mean that people already dislike their co-workers for any given reason. If they see a benefit to themselves that someone else is laid off - less competition, they don't think the person works hard enough, etc., they may choose that the one or two people lose their jobs once their job becomes redundant.

Click to shrink...

Ah okay, samoyed gave a good answer and yeah conflicts won't go away.

 

[Foffy]

I'd argue that automation is itself ethical because it allows us to choose to work. I mean, how many people work because they have to rather than because they want to? With the proper systems in place to ensure everyone has sufficient income to cover basic expenses, a world where most work is automated means people will pursue work which fulfils them or pays for luxuries like videogames as an example.

Wouldn't that be a more ethical world than one where you have to work several dead end minimum wage jobs just to pay your rent? A machine can take orders at McDonald's but you're worth more than that.

Click to shrink...

Right now, that's most people. That's the problem.

I know what you're saying. Real freedom comes when coercion for survival value is no longer on the cards. Most do not have that freedom unless they embrace the world of immense poverty as an act of protest, and I don't think many aim to be hermits or bums by choice.

 

[Failburger]

I'm all for automation. I don't understand why people want to do the same repetitive bull shit for hours on end year after year.

 

[samoyed]

Okay, yeah, that's what I had been wondering about!

Click to shrink...

Getting rid of interpersonal politics is not the goal of socialism, nor is it the goal of communism really. I have not spent a lot of time thinking about how I would do it.

You would still need people to like you under either system, I would say it is a part of the human condition. We can set it up so everyone's needs are met (UBI), but not make it so people stop liking/disliking each other and still respect individual choice. The hope is that if people don't see each other as competition, they will be kinder, it is a cultural problem in the end.

 

[Deleted member 22630]

I'm all for automation. I don't understand why people want to do the same repetitive bull shit for hours on end year after year.

Click to shrink...

No one wants to but it's either that or starve.

 

[DryCreek]

.

 

[the_wart]

Jobs are for doing something that (someone believes) is of value. If the thing is no longer (believed to be) of value, then the job should not exist. It sucks to be the person losing a job but society really, really needs mechanisms for working out what has value to whom, and you really don't want a government institution deciding this by fiat.

Jobs are also the shittiest possible welfare program. It seems deeply cruel to shackle people to pointless make-work, as though they are pets who need to be occupied so they don't wreck the furniture. If you want people to have money just give them money, don't make them do tricks for it.

 

[Jobbs]

Automation is inevitable, and we're just scratching the surface. Ultimately, there are few jobs performed by humans that can't be taken over by machines or AI.

Hopefully the happy ending is humans live large while robots and AI do most the work, but there'll be a lot of pain before we get there unfortunately

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Many times in my work I interview people about what exactly their job entails so we can automatize it, some people caught on tho and make our work harder.

 

[SageShinigami]

Note: This is just a thought I wanted to bring to ERA. I don't intend to judge people for their responses here, and I'd prefer to keep the whole thing civil.

So, I'm curious to hear from people who work on making organizations more lean, or work on automation products, or companies who are cornering the market in general.

The ultimate end of these types of projects inevitably mean that people will lose their jobs. Removing redundant roles, automating tasks that need humans, or creating a product that outstrips the competition by miles all helps to make your company more money...

...But also causes a ton of people to lose their jobs. I think my perspective is that the government/companies should take care of people who find themselves unemployed. But seeing that they aren't going to, what do you think people in automation or efficiency-based roles should do?

Click to shrink...

One way or another automation is going to force the conversation for the government. We can accomplish much of the work we do with less of the workforce than we have, and that'd probably be better for the environment anyway. This is basically the luddite conversation again--those people knew perfectly well what technology did, and they fought it because they wanted to keep their jobs, but you can't fight that stuff.

 

[Xando]

But seeing that they aren't going to, what do you think people in automation or efficiency-based roles should do?

Click to shrink...

I implement automation software on a daily basis and the writing has been on the wall so younger people move to a different field and older people retire early.

Most of my clients try to rehire people that get redundant internally or offer early retirement packages because they save so much money from automation.

I recently automated the order process for a customer which had 8 people doing nothing but put orders into the system all day.
Our new EDI process does that without the errors inevitably created by humans.

This process was implemented within 2 days and costs the client 5k in licensing instead of almost 200k in wages per year.

He kept two of them and everyone else moved to different areas.

 

[Mars]

I guess I don't have any issues with said progress but rather the implications it has on low to no skilled workers (while also low income) who don't have the resources offered to them in order to move toward more relevant roles within any organization. Especially for contractor workers. I know there is no one size fits all to this solution. The obstacle of childcare alone can be something of a financial burden for quite a few, where safety nets would help. But I honestly don't see this happening in my lifetime and see automation as another cause of the gap widen between classes and communities.

 

[kurahador]

Automation should be a mean to introduce a new kind of low/basic paying job, but instead big company prefer to use them as a mean to replace workers instead. It's fucked up. As someone who major in this thing, it really disappoints me.

 

[Neo C.]

I'm all for automation too, but it's obvious that we often fail at rehiring unemployed people.
There simply aren't easy solutions. I occassionally work as a language teacher to retrain umemployed people, but it's hard to get them to a level where they are good enough for job hunting.

 

[oreomunsta]

Some companies take the point of view that hours we can save through automation can be put towards more valuable efforts for customers.

They're few. But if you try to work for one of them, it is an ethical approach to automation

 

[samoyed]

There simply aren't easy solutions.

Click to shrink...

There is a relatively "easy" solution, easy in terms of design. UBI pegged to cost of living.

Politically it is damn near impossible.

So suffice to say, solutions exist, they are merely anathema to modern political (austerity, free market) and cultural (contempt for the poor, welfarephobia) tradition. Which is to say what needs to change is the politics and culture, not for the automation researchers to sandbag their research.
------------
Broadly we have constructed a society that:
1) Only feeds people with jobs
2) Does its best to try to reduce the number of jobs

Which is obviously a contradiction that leads to crises once the two tendencies reach some kind of tipping point.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

I don't wanna know what the world will do to the impoverished when they no longer have a use for them.

 

[bionic77]

What's different now versus the turn of the last century when workers were being worked to death?

Government regulations were the answer then and I don't see why it wouldn't work today.

 

[show me your skeleton]

I think there would always be jobs you cannot automate so people will just move on to those. Or they can move into doing the automation themselves.

Click to shrink...

first part is highly arguable, i'm not sure what kind of labour you feel cannot be automated. are you suggesting there is something inherently special about humanity?

second part is flawed - 'doing the automation themselves' suggests that line of work is freely available to the same number of people losing their previous job, that it is easily trainable and that itself isn't in line for automation which, if you think about it, is a bunch of skills a computer would be very very good at.

as a whole society is not ready for mass automation. as soon as self-driving long haul vehicles is pretty good, pretty reliable, we're fucked.

 

[samoyed]

are you suggesting there is something inherently special about humanity?

Click to shrink...

There is one thing that is relatively special about humanity. Humans can consume, robots cannot (well they can destroy, but not consume in the philosophical sense). A world where the universal "job" of humans is consumption is just another way of framing UBI.

Re: robots cannot consume
A robot can destroy 1lb of rice but cannot really satisfy their hunger with 1lb of rice because they do not get hungry, but people do. Furthermore, a human society cannot satisfy human hunger with rice destroying robots but can do it by giving rice to humans.