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1247 points mangoman | 4 comments | 05 Dec 16 14:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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delegate ◴[05 Dec 16 17:27 UTC] No.13107158[source]▶
Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad.

I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement)..

I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables.

I know all the people who work in these supermarkets. The cashier in the supermarket downstairs always sings a quiet song while she scans my products, she knows my daughter and she's always nice and friendly.

The cashier in the other store talks to the customers. She stops scanning and starts talking while the line waits. Some customers might join the conversation. I know she has an old cat that eats an unlimited amount of food if allowed to do so...

There are similar stories about other shops in the neighbourhood - they come to work, they serve the people in the neighbourhood, they go home. They do this until they retire.

These people like their jobs because we respect them for what they do, so they feel useful and they work hard.

I don't mind waiting in line for 3 minutes. Or 5. It's never longer than that, even if the cashier discusses the latest news with the old lady.

The humanity of it has value for us here and that value is greater than the time we'd save by removing the people from the shops.

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crazypyro ◴[05 Dec 16 17:37 UTC] No.13107308[source]▶
Trying to save jobs that are no longer the most efficient way of solving a problem is not the way to promote the value of humanity, in my opinion. People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible. They don't go to the grocery store for social interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay extra for something that only the minority get value out of is not a competitive strategy.

If humanity were to take your opinion, we'd never evolve as a society, lest we remove a need in society and with it, someones job.

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1. pavanred ◴[05 Dec 16 19:15 UTC] No.13108333[source]▶
Does automation really remove jobs or just displace them? Honest question. I mean, in this instance, I see perhaps jobs of 10 cashiers in a store replaced with 1-2 monitoring the store and rest done by automation. But, then this gives rise to a whole set of new jobs and industries too, the engineers that design these systems, the ones that build these machines, industries supplying manufacturing of hardware for these system, software developers, maintaining hardware, maintaining software, customer support, servicing. So, if this is deployed in all stores in a city then will employment numbers add up to become a zero sum? Is it just displacing employment from one category(or location) of manual tasks to different tasks?

Besides, if most people lose their jobs to automation in the near future, there won't be enough people who can afford to buy stuff at these stores anyway, so won't it become uneconomical to run these stores?

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2. VLM ◴[05 Dec 16 19:24 UTC] No.13108410[source]▶
It feels good to think automation doesn't eliminate jobs, but one thing is for certain, if it merely displaced them into higher salary jobs, no one would ever automate because it would eliminate profits.

At the profit levels usually seen in retail supermarkets, you can't stop paying all those people minimum wage and suddenly start paying them software dev salaries without an enormous hit to the income statement.

"won't it become uneconomical to run these stores?"

Essentially these stores are already smart vending machines stocked by humans occasionally at night. In the long run that might be where fresh food comes from. "Go to the vending machine and pick up a head of lettuce".

3. Clamhead ◴[05 Dec 16 19:40 UTC] No.13108591[source]▶
It's definitely not going to be one to one job replacement, not even close.

Software can be write once, run everywhere. You could replace thousands of cashiers with software written by a team of 10 software engineers.

Maintenance of hardware/software could be taken care of by a few people running to multiple stores throughout the day. Example would be Starbucks in San Francisco. There is a Starbucks nearly every block in the inner-city. You could just have two guys walk from store to store to perform checks/maintenance.

So yes, I see big possibility of thousands of service workers being out a of a job due to automation. Which is why a lot of people are saying we need to seriously consider something like universal basic income for the near future ..

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4. euyyn ◴[05 Dec 16 21:17 UTC] No.13109695[source]▶
That big decrease in cost allows the company to capture more market with a lower price, increasing profit. The profit goes to repay the investors that up-fronted the money to develop this. But the savings in everybody else's pockets eventually boost the economy, creating jobs.