This is another response to a post that was once found here.

Automation of mindless and repeatable vocations are coming, and are here.

But, automation requires co-existing humans and robotics in the same work space. Automation by itself fails, automation without a handler, fails, automation because it is focused and the world is not, fails.

I am a roboticist, I develop and build robots and I can say with good authority (given to me, by me) that robotics and automation will only ever make sense within our current scope when there are overseers and other users to ensure proper order is in place.

Robotics are not at a place (or will be for many years) where this will not be the case. The ‘we will automate you if you don’t accept our pay’ is absolute bullshit for several reasons:

  1. The cost to train, develop, and implement a robotic system for any amount of work is costly (millions)
  2. The cost to train, develop, and implement overseers is costly (far more than the bare minimum they want to pay)
  3. Robots are not generalists (yet…), and every job needs generalists so that they can do more than what they needed, or if deadlines change, or parts change, or really anything changes
  4. You have to radically change the entirely of a workplace, shop floor, warehouse, store, and more to become a 'robot-friendly’ work place. There are safety requirements, there are OSHA guidelines to ensure human workers are not harmed, there are insane requirements everywhere to ensure that a million dollar robot doesn’t topple over and break everything around it including itself.
  5. Maintenance_. Robots break._ Just as humans need to go home and rest, so do robots. Just as humans need to relax or else they break, so do robots. When robots do inevitably break you have to call in experts to fix them, to care for them, and to ensure that they never break and have a long lifespan.

Don’t believe any company that tries to espouse the “then we’ll just give your jobs to the robots” because if they could, they would have already - and they won’t because they can’t.

Automation is coming, but automation will only ever make sense when they can work alongside humans. Robots are tools, just like a computer is a tool, just like a hammer is a tool.