lokh:shadowfellefox:kereeachan: kereeachan:This was in fact my argument with a conservative economic
lokh:shadowfellefox:kereeachan: kereeachan:This was in fact my argument with a conservative economics professor I had in grad school. You might need LESS humans but it’s nowhere, NOWHERE near the point you need NO HUMANS. You need a babysitting human for pretty much every set of machines you have. Now, that can differ per establishment (our local Harris Teeter has 1 per 4 self checkouts while the Giant has a different setup with 1 per 12 self checkouts) but there is ALWAYS the babysitter human who is needed for:the customer doesn’t know how to use the devicethe device is only semi-intuitive so even someone who “knows” how to use it has trouble with itthe device is having an error that needs correcting to continue workingthe device is not workingPART of the device is not working and that prevents some functions but not othersThere is ALWAYS a babysitter human for the technology, a human backup in case the machine is not working. And that is why “they’ll automate you out of a job entirely” is total bullcrap. They might need LESS people but they will never need ZERO people. I forgot a bullet point: the machine is incapable of doing a specific part of the process a human is, like carding someone for alcohol. EVERY grocery store self checkout I’ve ever been to reminds you that you need to go to an actual cashier if you’re buying alcohol to make sure you’re of age, because the machine can’t do that. Also like half of them at any given time can’t take cash, like a human can. So sometimes there’s a specific part of the transaction the machine is still incapable of and you need a Human. McDonald’s can’t even keep their current ice cream machines working (and there’s a whole Thing where they don’t let franchisee owners install devices to help monitor/maintain them). You think they could manage a cheeseburger machine???? [Image description: Two threaded tweets by dan @/flagrater. The first tweet readsVery funny that people used to answer higher minimum wage demands by saying they’d just automate the jobs, and now that it’s prime time to do it due to labor shortage, the tech doesn’t work and is too expensive so they just put up signs saying “sorry we can’t McDonald today”The second tweet reads“if you raise wages slightly, we will be forced to make a perfect automatic custom hamburger machine that we will be able to keep up and running at all our 35 million locations without any issue”End description.] -- source link