I watched my 75 year old human plumber (who sniped a guy his first day in vietnam), kneel on two 3 inch wide joists and drill a 4 inch diameter hole at a 89 degree angle through said joists. Where’s the robot that does all that?

Above from all the other doomer crap in this article, I find the job replacement rhetoric the most offensive. It is always people that are so detached from the reality of labor, people who’s only “job” has been to essentially have ideas and opinions.

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vonnieda 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You know, I hope to hell a robot replaces his job. No 75 year old man, let alone Veteran, should have to do that. A robot with replaceable knee joints is a way better fit.

My sincere hope is that robots can take these painful, laborious jobs and free us mushy humans from them.

I hope they can also take the jobs of the snipers and the sniped.

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drfloyd51 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I hope we have the social infrastructure to support people whose jobs are automated. Because no one, especially a 75-year-old, should starve to death living in poverty.

	▲	ben_w 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given the pension ages in much of the world, and the USA in particular (I'm guessing which side he was on in Vietnam, but Vietnam's state pension age is lower), I'd hope this was in the past tense rather than the future.

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nkrisc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So a robot takes his job: who feeds and houses him? Or is he supposed to just go down a few rungs on the job ladder and take a worse job robots can’t currently do?

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nosioptar 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Option c: grind him up and mix him in with hamburger. Society saves money on his pension/housing/etc and consumers save a bit on their grocery bill.

Didn't Paul Wolfowitz say something about how there will be no more poverty once we eat all the poor?

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swat535 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A better question would be: why do we have a society where the elderly have to work to survive and get their basic needs met?

	▲	nkrisc 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s also a good question, but ultimately a separate one. My point is that replacing people with robots before answering your question is irresponsible.

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suriyaG 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i 100% agree with your sentiment. but what is the replacement here? go without any insurance or salary? without providing an alternative for better life, this is basically just robbing someone off a livelihood

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vonnieda 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If he is 75 and still has to work to get by he has already been robbed of his livelihood. The average lifespan for males in the US is 76ish.

Maybe he just does it for the love of the game, but there are so many old, sick, people in pain who have to labor like this just to get by every day.

Universal basic income is a simple and obvious answer. In a few years we will have zillion dollar companies being run entirely by robots making enormous profits. Share the fucking profits with everyone so that everyone can at least live with dignity.

	▲	jmogly 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		He definitely is doing it for the love of the game. Different generation loves to work
	▲	krapp 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>Universal basic income is a simple and obvious answer. In a few years we will have zillion dollar companies being run entirely by robots making enormous profits. Share the fucking profits with everyone so that everyone can at least live with dignity. Sure, but what do we do in the US? UBI would be politically and culturally a non-starter here unless it was extremely means tested and limited (making it no longer universal) and all other forms of welfare were repealed (under the aegis of "reducing government bloat and inefficiency.") Americans won't accept spending their hard earned taxes to make the lives of non-whites, immigrants and the indigent poor too comfortable.
	▲	xienze 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> In a few years we will have zillion dollar companies being run entirely by robots making enormous profits. "Zillion", I see you've done extensive research here. And these companies aren't making any profit, nevermind enormous. > Share the fucking profits with everyone so that everyone can at least live with dignity. Give us a yearly number for what "living with dignity" looks like, multiply that by the entire population, and tell us what you come up with.

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weard_beard 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, killing robots would stimulate the economy but I’d like to see robot victims reduce the surplus population!

They’ll never match real children when it comes to dying horribly.

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watwut 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That veteran is not doing the job because lack of robots. He does it because he needs money and cant get them otherwise.

His situation wont improve with robots. Much less with robots in society run by right wing anti-social services anti-pathy millionaires.

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uneoneuno 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah but the accountant, the product manager, the graphics designer, the engineer, the doctor, the lawyer are fucked.

Good thing we have plumbers. But who’s gonna have money to pay a plumber if nobody has jobs?

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HPsquared 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The government will receive like 40% of whatever value the robots produce.

	▲	ben_w 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It might. One potential failure mode is the owners of the robots doing something that echoes words Musk himself has used: "robot army". Who is sovereign in this future? The government? The people? The bosses of the AI/robotics companies? The owners of equipment bought from the AI/robotics companies? The implicit learned biases of the AI itself, even if the trainers have since died? Even on that last one, a lot of people respond as if AI is either competent or not competent, with the former meaning they won't take over and the latter meaning they'd be destroyed by taking over as their own systems would not be maintained. Such binary competence is not required: a cancer can kill its host despite depending on that host, because the competence a cancer has is entirely focused on short-term success vs. the body's own defences.

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qup 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Other plumbers

	▲	bell-cot 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And electricians, and carpenters, and masons, and Water Dept. employees, and ...

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LadyCailin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

UBI paid for by a tax on token usage and an “employment” tax per robot.

You’re still free to have a job of some sort if you come up with one, but the UBI is enough to cover all your needs and plenty of basic wants.

I don’t see any other way to do it once the automation cat is out of the bag. Retraining is fine and all but if you have to retrain every 4 years after your last job was just automated away, then what? We can’t just leave people behind like that, but we also probably can’t stop the progress.

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redsocksfan45 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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ben_w 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The robot part exists, the hard part is the intelligence for that robot to be autonomous.

Stuff like this is already available as a standard industrial product: https://www.hilti.com/content/hilti/W1/US/en/business/busine...

Giving a robot proprioception, balance, or even good enough vision to reliably position itself (tracks, wheels, or limbs) without crashing through soft ceilings underneath it, or failing to recognise the correct spot to putting the tool, that's what's currently really only good enough for a tech demo rather than an product you'd want to buy/hire.

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squidbeak 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the 'Not today, so never" fallacy. As capabilities in all fields are stagnant and human progress stands still. I would switch off the 'nam flicks and check out some of the recent Chinese robotics progress before attempting to peer into the future.

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ben_w 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd temper my views of the apparent recent Chinese robotics progress.

It's more than nothing, but there can still be a big gap between what is presented and the real timeline to follow; see e.g. the US example with Tesla's "Paint It Black" video, what was it, around a decade between the video and the AI getting to the level shown in that video?

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squidbeak 2 hours ago | parent [-]

My view doesn't need tempering. I talked about progress, which is indisputable, whatever its pace or current limitations might be. And that was the entire point: robotics is not a stagnant field.

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ben_w 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> I talked about progress, which is indisputable, whatever its pace or current limitations might be

It's extremely disputable, and indeed disputed. Just as with my example of Tesla's video, it's easy to fake progress.

All it comes down to right now is a cynicism dial.

That said, I just realised I've conflated two things which I find annoying when other people conflate: AI and robotics.

	▲	squidbeak 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		China's robots are not Tesla's.

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folkrav 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The robot doesn't have to do all that to severely impact the plumber's, or just trades', job market as a whole. A massive influx of new trainees in the field will inevitably pull salaries down, thus the viability of the field as a career path. Even partial automation can, at least temporarily, reduce demand for certain things, or at the minimum move demand to other parts of the field.

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flippyhead 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are right that they cannot be replaced TODAY. The bet people seem to be making is that the future will be very different and arrive a lot sooner then our intuition might suggest.

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dmortin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe the robot won't take all the jobs, but they may take many jobs. Those masses won't be happy if some of the people will still have jobs.

And BTW, 75 year olds doing physical labor is not an ideal state of things unless that plumber really wants to work at 75.