Amazon Go Shrinkage

Last week, Amazon opened its pilot 'cashier-less' retail store to the public.  It was announced over a year ago and I discussed it then.  Now, people outside of Amazon's own employee base have had an opportunity to experience it.  And mostly it has been positive.

Reviewers like the low (but not quite gone) employee interaction.  Most comment on the novelty of stuffing things into your backpack and walking out.  They all look at the grid of cameras suspended over the store and try and figure out what is actually going on (Amazon is not saying).  All of this is great.

Then they start talking about the implications.  As I don't live anywhere near Seattle, that's where I can jump in.

Work is What You Make of AI

Last month I got all on a kick about how automation is going to take our jobs and that that is a good thing.  There has been some more press on this topic so I want to continue kicking it around.

The first article for my shouting-into-an-empty-house discussion is from the BBC: How long will it take for your job to be automated.  This is about an Oxford study that asked 352 scientists how long various jobs would take to be automated.  This is a better information than the one that the Will Robots Take My Job site used.  And it offers up a time frame that is more heartening for those that are hip deep in the status quo: 120 year before 50% of all jobs are automated.  Hold on to that thought.

The second article is about Eric Schmidt, Google Founder and Techno Spouter (of course I'm jealous, people ask his opinions instead of me trying to force them down any ear that will listen).  In it, Mr. Schmidt puts forth the idea that A.I. will create more jobs that can't be filled instead of destroying them.  His reasoning is that automation will make workers more efficient, more productive, but that humans will still need to be part of the process.  He cites a McKinsey study that says that 5% of current jobs can be automated with today's technology for his reasoning.  It's a very together-we-are-stronger statement, but it has a few holes.

No Jobs Are Safe

Hello, World!  I'm back after a brief hiatus that I spent remembering our troops by taking the Middle School Daughter Unit white water rafting (among other things).

But that's all over now and it's back to banging the what-do-we-do-when-the-jobs-are-all-automated drum.  The jumping off point is a website I discovered through Reddit, called:

WILL ROBOTS TAKE MY JOB

The Human Bowl

I apologize for not giving you your weekly dose of Schmoid last week, but I had the opportunity to go skiing at Alta, UT (my favorite ski area) which meant less time for writing.  With that out of the way...

Happy American Sports Advertising Day!

I recognize that you are reading this on a Monday and that either Boston or Atlanta is celebrating city wide an achievement accomplished by 53 players plus associated coaches.  But I'll set aside the Illusion of Awesomeness Transference (IAT?  I'll have to work on that) and see if I can pull something IoT related out of the Superb Owl.

(source image)

Blitz the Robot

And, look!  I can!  And it's about jobs!  Oh, joy!  Many of the jobs that were once thought to be safe from automation are now being threatened.  From Wall Street stock pickers to truck driver to fast food service jobs, automation is taking over.  Even artistic endeavors are coming under attack.  All of which begs the question:

Are there any jobs that are safe from automation?

That's where the Super Bowl comes in.  (Most) Sports are safe from automation.  While it is possible to build robots that can run and jump and throw and move better than humans, it would make the sports pointless.   Something that can perform actions flawlessly every time becomes boring to watch very quickly.  What makes sports worth doing and worth watching is that we can relate to the human on the field doing something incredible, know that we cannot do it and marvel at their achievement.  With the robot, it quickly becomes "Oh, of course it can do that.  It's a robot."  And with that, we all switch off the game and the ad revenue dries up.  It is the imperfect striving for the perfect that inspires us, not the perfect being perfect.

An example of this is Battle Bots, the TV show that pitted remote controlled motorized devices against each other in a gladiatorial contest.  While not truly 'robotic' (the machines were not autonomous), it did not take long for the designer/pilots to figure out that low wedge flipping bots were offered the highest chance of winning.  From there, it was a matter of who could build the most maneuverable bot with the lowest front edge to their wedge, get it under the competitor and put them on their back.  The crazy saws and hammers and flame throwers that looked fabulous in promos turned out to be almost useless.  So the show got boring.  So the show got cancelled.  Twice.

We Can't All Be Athletes

The problem is that only those that are really close to perfect are worth using to sell beer and cars and nachos.  Everyone else is only interesting if they are related to you in some way.  The entire city of San Mateo, CA did not shut down and throw a party every time Tom Brady played football in High School.  I'm guessing, based entirely on my own lack of giving a sh** during that portion of my life, that not even the whole school showed up.

So, for those of us that aren't good at sports, how are we supposed to live if all of the other jobs have had humans automated out of them?  As with all things, there's some good news and some bad news.

The Good News

The reason to automate most things is because it allows for them to be made/accomplished for less money.  That means that the goods and services provided should become cheaper.  We won't need as much money to afford the basics because those basics will be cheaper.

But who wants to live on just the basics?  There is some good news there, too.  Even the mid-level luxury items should come down in price, not just because their production has been automated, but because...

The Bad News

... we won't have enough money to afford them if they don't.  If robots take all of the jobs and jobs are how we are expected to make money and money is how we continue to manage our economy, then there won't be any money for people to buy anything.  It won't matter how low the price is, no one (except the highest level athletes) will have anything to exchange for those goods and services.

The Even Worse News

The worst part is that we need this automation.  Not for the luxury goods, but for the subsistence level stuff.  With 7.5 Billion people on this planet (and growing), humans alone can no longer grow enough food to feed everyone.  We cannot care for the sick and elderly relying on just ourselves.  Sanitation, public safety, transportation, shelter.  None of it can be made on the necessary scale to deal with the growing population without automation.  We need automated fertilizer systems for agriculture.  We need elderly care bots.  We need home construction bots.  There are simply too many of us to manage it any other way.

But...

There are other solutions, but they are so draconian that they are barely worth mentioning.  Who gets to decide who gets to have children?  Who gets to decide who gets to live where?  Who gets to decide who deserves health care and who does not?  None of those things are going to happen.  At least not easily or quickly or on the global scale necessary for any real change to happen.  And would we want to live in that world if we did?  Fewer people also means fewer ideas and thoughts and ... athletes striving for perfection.

I don't have an ultimate answer to this dilemma.  Universal Basic Income is a start, but where will that money come from?  Tax the manufacturers and their robots just so people can afford the things that the robots make?  That sounds like a vicious cycle that will not end well.  But it may be a necessary step to a post-monetary society.  Not socialist, necessarily, but something else where people are freed from the basic grind to find food and water and shelter and health.  Where they can strive for something more.

This is Schmoid, signing off to go strive for my own perfection.

Moby Schmoid

Book Review Time

I want to depart from the basic tech commentary for a week and discuss a different aspect of technology and that's art of making a living in the tech space.

I was recently sent this NYT review by my mother (thanks, Mom.  I think).  From that, I bought Disrupted and read it over the course of a month.  It should not have taken me that long because it is not a long book or a difficult read, but I had to put it down a few times.  I'm not really going to review the book as a piece of literature (or not much), but I do want to talk about how HARD IT HIT ME.