this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Even with automating shitty jobs that no one wants, you're still getting people out of a job and the only way they have of making money. This is kind of how people reacted when Boston Dynamics showcased its warehouse robot. It seems that we need a universal basic income first, but no politicians are willing to do that at least until unpleasant jobs are automated. There's a bit of a chicken and egg problem there. And, on top of this, companies don't care that much about automating shitty jobs because the people in them get low wages, so they don't cost the company much to employ.
when we invented cars and got rid of horses in NYC, did we weep for the people whose job it was to shovel horse shit off the streets every day?
OH THOSE POOR HORSESHIT SHOVELLERS. REPLACED BY THAT HORRIBLE NEW TECHNOLOGY. Now we're burning fossil fuels and have rubber micro plastics in our food and water! We should never have had ICE cars. They took our jobs!
TOOK ER JERBS!!!
I mean, yes. The wiki page for technological unemployment has some good examples, like the mechanised loom being disastrous for artisan weavers.
The big thing is that the effects of new technology causing mass job loss are felt far more severely when the economy is in a bad state. A particular Australian news outlet bragged last year about producing "thousands" of news articles using generative AI. The outlet in question is garbage, but the journalists who lost their jobs (or were never hired) aren't living in a prosperous economic environment where starting an outlet of their own is in any way feasible.
Sure, the whole industry is far from being replaced, but if you have the misfortune of dedicated a good chunk of your life to learning a particular skill only for it to be made redundant due to new technology, you have every right to be afraid and uncertain about the future as long as the safety nets we have are completely inadequate.
I am still not shedding a tear for those poor out of work shit shovellers.