Automation: Good or bad?

When I say automation what I'm specifically talking about is things like self check outs at stores, those little touch screens some restaurants have at their tables where you can order and pay, a bar in my town has an automated beer dispenser (you get a barcoded wrist band from the bar tender that the machine scans before dispensing), and self driving delivery trucks.

My question to everyone else is, what are your thoughts on it? Good, bad, something we just need to learn to live with, something we need to fight against?

I have found , most times no conflict exist, so why fight? I'm ol school. If I don't get service I xonttip.to easy. Makes the new resturaunt trend of automation seem...to me... Impersonal, so why go out? My focus has changed significantly as well as my character when at nights I would seem to come to life. You , in the food service will see a lot oof changes as well as new " tactics" and it's OK to pass. To each their own. My kitchen is always open any time ! There's always plenty of food drink and chairs here !

Even though I've been involved in it, I think overall it's probably bad. It just makes us go faster. We don't take time to slow down anymore. That tends to, IMO, lead us to have less patience with people. I think in a way it also makes us see people as less than. We, maybe on an unconscious level see that store clerk as nothing more than we see that fas-chek. We also, possibly, lose those skills of interacting with others. I grew up in a small town. The store clerks would ask about people's families, there was a bonding experience there, and sometimes still is, that you don't get from the automation.

Then I think it's bad on the economic level. Even places like McDonald's and Wendy's are wanting to automate their services. This can be a big issue. With automation, we've pretty much became a service world. When automation replaces that, then jobs, etc. will also disappear, and more safety nets will be needed. And again, just my opinion, people blame some of this automation on minimum wage, and people wanting it increased. But I believe that it wouldn't matter how low the minimum wage went, when you factor in greed. If someone can get the same job done for .10 an hour that they had to pay $1 an hour before. They will do it, more dough-re-mi in their pockets. So nothing can stop this from happening, except maybe refusing to engage in commerce with those places.

But the good is that it would be great for businesses. Cheap Labor, round the clock workers, no healthcare benefits needed. No vacations.

I know in my job, we probably eliminated the need for hundreds if not thousands of bank tellers, accountants, and others that engage in financial transactions. All replaced by one computer. In a way, it's very sad.

Damn, I thought this was going to be about production-automation, which I have more interesting and conflicting views on.



my views on Service automation are for more straightforward.
It can bugger off.


I refuse to use it (This includes ATMs, buying online, and even using the interactive maps in shopping malls.)


The day I buy a coffee with a touch screen, is the day I've lost my goddamn mind. (he says on the internet....)


Aside from my "personal" feelings on the interaction with the devices - I don't like that thousands of teenagers are not getting the opportunity to work in frustrating service jobs.

Of course, the attitude of "not knowing a damn thing" isn't just with the onset of programmes that can do half your job for you.

Before there was self-service checkouts, store staff would give the answer "google it" if you asked a question about a product - which would just about guarantee me spending exactly zero dollars there (and possibly earn a stern lecture on professionalism and trade knowledge...)


(At the moment, I'm not too hugely affected by it, as I make my home a bit away from all this nonsense; but when I have to go to the big-smoke and see this stuff....
*triggered* )




EDIT: A bit of sanity - My local Government Services branch started employing more people, lowered the service counters and put chairs in, and took away the big plastic "safety windows" - They found that customers were less agitated in a friendly open environment and it caused less issues than in the state/government areas that have machines to "sort you" into your waiting areas, standing-service counters and you speak through a hole in perspex - all of which puts people on the wrong foot to start with and makes them more likely to go off the rails.


I can see the logic - Given a computer's lack of life, I can't see myself feeling bad putting a machete through it if it messes up my order for a mocha frappe, or doesn't calculate my shopadocket discount correctly.

It would certainly represent a change of environment, but in the same way as living machines we gotta try and understand appropriate boundaries of interface and use methods of communication to negotiate mutual understanding and agreements along them.

Anything which can benefit from shifting to specific procedural requirements by humans will be perhaps where automation will really take off, because it then serves as a formal foundation for automation to extend to the extent of replacing human control with instead just the external capacity for human command only. Ideally in my opinion a human would always be close by if not directly over-watching or commanding most all robotic enterprise and all dangerous robotic enterprise should have a legislative requirement to have thorough record keeping of all actions and parameters associated with any decision making in such a way that even separate systems of monitoring can provide a measure of independent verification to that end. For example in aircraft, they already spend most of the flight on autopilot which uses the navigation computer to direct the autopilot. The pilots do not even need to take off or land, in some aircraft. They just sit there, watch it doesn't mess up and handle the communications.

So I'm not adverse to the shift away from menial work, but like all change its going to sporadic, unbalanced and sometimes backwards!! The concerning things are AI, and unlawful militarization.... otherwise I'd like to think military robots which are armed do retain a human in the loop for kill decisions at the least.

For example in aircraft, they already spend most of the flight on autopilot which uses the navigation computer to direct the autopilot. The pilots do not even need to take off or land, in some aircraft. They just sit there, watch it doesn't mess up and handle the communications.

In this instance the Autopilot is a tool, as much as this keyboard is a tool, or using CAD instead of hand draughting, or the plane itself being able to fly rather than someone trying to flap their arms...

I'm am all for technology that improves someone's capability to do their job, or reduces fatigue, increases precision etc.


Having a touch-screen Menu doesn't improve the food in a restaurant (it could, arguably, make the chef's job a poofteenth easier by not having the read the waiter's shorthand, but that seems like a stretch)


It does remove a lot of the experience, and I'm actually not receiving any "service" at all - I may as well go to a pub and pay half the price for my meal, and pick it up from the counter myself


I can't work out why I'd still be paying full price for my groceries if I'm scanning and bagging them myself, and I don't even get a "have a nice day" to go with it.


Computers and so on are fantastic and a boon to the world.

This implementation of them is asinine





As for military robots (straying from the OP) - Regulating war, and the tools thereof, is a weird concept.

In a "fair game", sure, regulations abound, otherwise it's basically "the most money wins"

Having ethical battlefields where everyone plays by the rules is bizarre.

So, we (the mysterious "we" being the "good guys" in this scenario) can say "Oh, but we didn't use indiscriminate death bots" and that's lovely.
If "they" do use indiscriminate death bots, and "they" win, well you can't bury your dead in the moral highground.

JamesSand wrote: So, we (the mysterious "we" being the "good guys" in this scenario) can say "Oh, but we didn't use indiscriminate death bots" and that's lovely.
If "they" do use indiscriminate death bots, and "they" win, well you can't bury your dead in the moral highground.

Indiscriminate deathbots don't win wars, but losing all your people to them does lose wars for sure!!! But yea I know what you mean perhaps - and to an extent your right, but that does not stop efforts to shape conflict as much as possible to avoid too much abuse of military power. The Nazi's thought there tech advantage would give them an edge but it didn't add up in the face of a larger multinational resistance. Once the shooting starts everyone rushes to equalize capabilities and remove any advantage, the main thing then becomes how many friends you've got... and deathbots don't make friends so well :lol: