This weekend involved a bit of running around and dealing with last-minute errands before a big family trip, so I got up early on Saturday morning and pulled into the local fast food drive-through for a quick breakfast. Much to my surprise, when I leaned out to talk to the speaker to make my order from my driver's truck window, I was confronted with a computer voice instead of a human.
After the program screwed up my order, and I had to do it all over again stalling myself and the person behind me, I finally got up to the main window to pay and receive my food. I asked the service staff if the machine was permanent or just a test. They confirmed it was in fact a fully-automated ordering system. They only person at the front and window now was assigned to take payment and process change back to the ordering party. Literally, a computer has now effectively replaced in total people at the lowest minimum-wage job level in front of my eyes. This might already be occurring in a number of big cities where tech gets tested far more often, but to see it out in suburbia, away from the urban setting, is a bit of a shock now.
Nothing New Here for the Future
Futurists and Tech Wonks have for years been predicting computers and automation will soon be replacing many jobs, and now the latest mantra is reminding everyone that every few decades new technology creates widespread replacement of people all the time. The wheel and engine replaced horse-drawn businesses. Steam engines replaced sailing vessels. Jets replaced prop engines, and plane travel has for the most part replaced the majority of train and boat travel. So, yes, technically speaking, technology replaces old activities all the time. However, in none of those situations in the past has the world population been as big as it is today depending so much on service functions and related jobs to pay for living costs. In short, change now really does have the real possibility of making a lot of people obsolete and, worse, homeless. Why? Well we don't see capitalism moving at hyper-speed to being charitable, now do we? It will take collapsing markets and disappearing buyers to force companies to change their profit motivation first.
Tech is So Very Attractive
The advantages of tech replacing people is obvious. It can run 24/7, there's no sunk costs for wage-based health benefits or retirement, there's no cost associated with recruitment and training, and additional duties can be added all the time with just more coding versus convincing. It's no surprise why companies want to get rid of hundreds of people and replace them with technology that never turns off. In terms of short-term profits, working people out of jobs just makes a lot of sense for thinner operating expense margins. However, socially and in terms of economy as a whole, it's very likely to create a huge class of people that are effectively "useless" now.
The rebuttal argument is that jobs won't disappear; people will just retrain for new skills and functions. Us older folks have heard this bullshit before. in the 1990s at the beginning of the Bush Recession, the same dribble was put out there about how people will just learn to do service jobs versus lost well-paying manufacturing jobs. The reality was that many of that generation never again achieved their same salary levels of income. They had to hobble together an assortment of part-time jobs and working day and night for years just to pay bills. But, because they "disappeared" from sight, with younger generations more than willing to learn service jobs, the concern faded away.
Are We Paying Attention At All?
So here we are again, except the replacement factor doesn't need more people. It's a complete elimination of people. For every one engineer that recodes the automation program, 100 people lose their paychecks. That rate of exchange is unsustainable without creating massive poverty shock across different regions as automation spreads. Can they freelance their way out of a hole? Probably not. We've already seen automation wiping out or cutting income for freelancers in half too. Yet everyone continues to be pushing AI, passing the buck of what to do with displaced workers.
Think this isn't a problem? Look back in history and see what happened in the 1910, 1920s and 1930s in Europe with massive displacement. The lessons are there about what happens with concentrations of wealth, especially through technology, but is anyone listening this time?
