Automation Threatens 1.5 Million Workers In Britain, Says ONS (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected. Supermarket checkout assistants have already borne the brunt of the phenomenon, the Office for National Statistics found, with 25.3% of jobs disappearing between 2011 and 2017. Other jobs where automation has taken its toll include laundry workers, farm workers and tyre fitters, among which numbers have dropped by 15% or more, said the ONS, as machines have replaced labor.

Women are most likely to lose out, said the ONS. "The analysis showed a higher proportion of roles currently filled by women are at risk of automation; in 2017, 70.2% of high-risk jobs were held by women." It named Tamworth, Rutland and South Holland in Lincolnshire as the areas most exposed to automation -- partly reflecting a relatively high level of farm workers -- while Camden in north London has the workers least at risk. But the ONS analysis also found many workers -- especially those in their mid to late 30s and who work in London and the south-east -- have little to fear from the rise of the robots. Those with higher levels of education appear to be better protected. "The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university," the report says.

Comments

Re:Trump

[Trimaz]

Literally the worst troll on this site.

Wow this story changed in 5 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

It went from pro automation and don't worry people are smart enough to pick better careers to ALL MY GOD THE BOTS ARE COMING!!!

WTH slashdot editors... WTH...

Re:Wow this story changed in 5 minutes

[DarkOx]

Yes; we would not want to be subjected to a diversity of opinion. Slashdot is already myopic enough; if you want perfect echo chamber you can have that at facebook. Just mute everyone you disagree with.

What to do with all the people?

[AHuxley]

Who can only work at jobs that will be automated?
Learn to code and hope their low IQ can keep up?
No need to bring more people into the UK with no and low skills?

Re:What to do with all the people?

[Dutch Gun]

No worries. We'll employ them writing articles about how robots are going to take all our jobs away.

Re:What to do with all the people?

[AHuxley]

Make the big robot parts very modular so very unskilled workers can swap out the entire robot.
No extra need for years of education on robot repair/installing/testing?
Robot design ethics.
Make robot production line laws to have to use no skilled humans for maintenance?

Re: What to do with all the people?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you probably think your comment is not as funny as the other ones but it is

Re:What to do with all the people?

[ShanghaiBill]

No worries. We'll employ them writing articles about how robots are going to take all our jobs away.

Half can do that, and the other half can write about economic fallacies.

If automation really caused job losses and impoverishment, Western Civilization would have collapsed in the 1800s, and countries like Ethiopia and Afghanistan that wisely avoided the "productivity catastrophe" would dominate the world.

Re:What to do with all the people?

[religionofpeas]

Problem isn't so much about the total economic output, but rather the distribution of the wealth. Those without a job would also like a piece of the pie.

Re:What to do with all the people?

[DarkOx]

Oddly enough the low skill jobs are proving harder to automate. Finding humans to reliably weld auto or aircraft frames everytime - is difficult as it requires both talent and practice. On the other hand we have successfully created robots that can it; at least for scale production.

Now show me a robot that is good at entering houses and scrubing toilets and bath tubs..

Re:What to do with all the people?

[apoc.famine]

I'd highly recommend at least reading the summary before commenting. It might help you to not be 100% wrong.

The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below...

You're barking up the wrong tree regardless.

The trend has not been to make specialized robots to do exactly what humans have been doing. The trend has been to redesign tasks so that robots can do them, or re-engineer things so that they don't need to be done.

Scrubbing toilets and tubs: Replaced by hydrophobic coatings.
Welding: No longer needed due to 3D printing

Have you ever seen one of the burger machines in action? Go check out some of the youtube videos. They're not making a robot with an arm and a spatula to replace a line cook. They're redesigning the entire line and stuffing it into a machine. A human can't take over and do part of the job, because it's not designed for that to happen. The whole thing is fundamentally different than the job it's replacing, despite producing the same end-product.

Right now they are niche demonstrators. But when the major fast food chains start mass-producing burger machines and installing them, goodbye fry cooks. A half dozen jobs will be turned into two or three, to travel around and service the machines, clean them, and restock them. Until they build a self-cleaning mechanism into them, and automate the restocking from the walk-in....

Re:What to do with all the people?

[ComputerGeek01]

Ah yes, the rest of us should learn how we should capitulate from those populations that are already broken and submissive. Only then can we properly beg for scraps. Look at how much their lives improve through the song and dance of globalization! That extra dollar a month is a boon to their families! Never mind that it doesn't keep pace with inflation, they aren't educated enough to know that and as long as the globalists have their way they never will be. Their standard of living is almost not considered a war crime, we just need to eliminate a few more of those pesky human rights laws.

Re:What to do with all the people?

[strikethree]

Those without a job would also like a piece of the pie.

Fuck the pie! People want to eat!

Rich people: Those fuckers want some of my luxuries. Fuck 'em if they can't figure it out on their own!

Poor people: I want to eat tonight! Is that so much to ask for?

The rest of us: The rich and the poor are BOTH greedy!

Sex Bots?

[rtb61]

Imagine the numbers of 'workers' who would be put out of 'work' by sex bots and at the highest levels of fake elitism, especially at 'the establishment' levels;D.

bully balls

[weedjams]

Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.

Re:bully balls

[Just A Gigolo]

I always choose the shelf-checkout since there are always too many idiots queuing to pay the cashier.

Re:bully balls

[ShanghaiBill]

Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.

Before Woolworths opened the first "department store" in the 1880s, customers would enter the store, hand their list to a clerk, who would then go back into the "store" and retrieve the items. It was quite a revolution to allow the customers to go into the "store" area and select their own items.

So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?

Re:bully balls

[AmiMoJo]

So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?

One of the reasons that people like online shopping is that it eliminates the need to do the clerk's job yourself. No need to push the trolley round when you order online.

Re:bully balls

[Freischutz]

Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.

Before Woolworths opened the first "department store" in the 1880s, customers would enter the store, hand their list to a clerk, who would then go back into the "store" and retrieve the items. It was quite a revolution to allow the customers to go into the "store" area and select their own items.

So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?

I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store and every time I buy a heavy duty cleaning chemical an energy drink or a packet of pipe tobacco for my dad the damn things call for a store employee to verify that I'm older than 16. I'm almost 7 feet tall, I'm built like Shrek the Ogre and I have a long black beard all the way down to my chest, a supermarket teller does not mistake me for a 16 year old and finishes the check-out procedure much faster.

Re:bully balls

[DarkOx]

Yes; and thankfully Amazon.com has brought that model back. I essentially go make them a list; someone or some robot fetches the items for me and other people deliver them. Its great for commodity items.

Re:bully balls

[Daralantan]

I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store

Reminds me of my great joy with shopping recently where it freezes and says "Help is on the way" and I look around, seeing 5 other people looking around for the attendant to come over, swipe their card, and type their number in so that the transaction can continue. Ends up taking me 10 minutes to check out because it takes 9 for the customer service person to walk over and not even look at the machine (it was bitching that I didn't put the meat in the bag / on the scale, something it didn't complain about until the second the meat was in the bag on the scale). This is also made better when the reason you are waiting is that the person is nowhere near their station, or is just talking to a fellow coworker and ignoring the line.

Re:bully balls

[Freischutz]

I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store

Reminds me of my great joy with shopping recently where it freezes and says "Help is on the way" and I look around, seeing 5 other people looking around for the attendant to come over, swipe their card, and type their number in so that the transaction can continue. Ends up taking me 10 minutes to check out because it takes 9 for the customer service person to walk over and not even look at the machine (it was bitching that I didn't put the meat in the bag / on the scale, something it didn't complain about until the second the meat was in the bag on the scale). This is also made better when the reason you are waiting is that the person is nowhere near their station, or is just talking to a fellow coworker and ignoring the line.

Yeah, that is also annoying too, Even so, I'd consider using a self checkout if they could iron that out and build a version that can tell a medium sized hairy Scandinavian cave troll form a pimple faced 10 year old.

Re:bully balls

[HeckRuler]

Relax, once they can track all items with cheap cameras and cheaper processing they'll just automatically tally your items and send you a bill as you walk out the door. It's at TRL 8 or 9. It's coming soon and will replace the concept of checking out. [Amazon's workign on it](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/21/inside-amazons-surveillance-powered-no-checkout-convenience-store)

Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

Do these 'reports' in these 'newspapers' actually have any real credibility, or are they as full of shit as I think they are?
For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit, and it's always temporary.
Humans by definition cannot become obsolete we are the tool makers and tool users the tools do not make us obsolete we make the TOOLS obsolete.
Seriously people need to get a grip, and the FUD spreaders need to have their shit slapped until they learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[ShanghaiBill]

Do these 'reports' in these 'newspapers' actually have any real credibility, or are they as full of shit as I think they are?

The latter. They are spewing economic nonsense.

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit

Quick rule of thumb:
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
The is what the public has believed for at least three centuries.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[serviscope_minor]

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

1. All automation in the past was GOOD.

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

2. All automation in the future will be BAD.

So exactly like it was in the past? "we" ight be more productive now, but that's in aggregate not for individuals.

How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[DarkOx]

How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?

Was that a mistake though or was it the market doing allocation efficiency. Arguably it was focusing resources on those who were most productive. It just happens to suck if that isn't you.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Ol Olsoc]

The latter. They are spewing economic nonsense.

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

Okay, so your argument is that because something happened before, that it will always happen. I do know some folks who believe that because Malthus was wrong, that Malthus will always be wrong. Apparently the earth can support an infinite number of people, as a technological breakthrough will always happen that allows population to increase.

So I'm not even going to argue that point, because I want to ask a different question, with the assumption that you are correct, and that every automation will create new jobs as a irrefutable fact.

So as increases in automation inevitably create more jobs than they eliminate - what are those jobs?

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Ol Olsoc]

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

1. All automation in the past was GOOD.

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

There is an example of that in many small towns in the USA. Middle aged people of a limited skill set have lost their jobs, typically in things like clothing factories for the ladies, and the mines for men. The factories and the mines close, the mines especially become more automated. So you have people in their 50's with approximately 0 chance of being hired, between their skillset and age.

If they move to find work, it will be minimum wage work, but they are still not likely to find any.

So you have a lot of unemployable people, and depop hasn't become fashionable, so what to do? Social Security Disability pretty much filled the gap and kept them from living under bridges.

So yeah, instead of Bill's bold assertion that all automation creates more jobs - ask a coal miner about this - it is very disruptive, and quite a few people lose out. This is why I love to ask these people just what jobs will be created when almost everything is automated. There should be thought put into this, as a lot of people who have had their lives disrupted end up disrupting everyone else's. And there is some history on that.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Ol Olsoc]

How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?

Was that a mistake though or was it the market doing allocation efficiency. Arguably it was focusing resources on those who were most productive. It just happens to suck if that isn't you.

There have been some really interesting times after large numbers of humans were put out of work. Some of them gave rise to very scary times, and even in the 1940's, a brief blip in the world's population. While Post WW1 Germany's unemployment and inflation gave rise to eventual full employment and a lot of competitive employment around the world in response, the technological advances that donnybrook brought about makes further total war economic stimulus a little scary.

Anyhow, the point is that perhaps instead of simply throwing a lot of people in the trash, then having to deal with them when they revolt, it might be a better idea to plan ahead.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[ShanghaiBill]

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

Life sucked because they were poor, not because they were getting poorer, because they weren't.

People moved to the city and took factory jobs because it was an improvement over the crushing rural poverty that they left behind.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[apoc.famine]

There is an example of that in many small towns in the USA. Middle aged people of a limited skill set have lost their jobs, typically in things like clothing factories for the ladies, and the mines for men. The factories and the mines close, the mines especially become more automated. So you have people in their 50's with approximately 0 chance of being hired, between their skillset and age..... Social Security Disability pretty much filled the gap and kept them from living under bridges.

I've lived through this in a couple of states in the US now, and you're half-way there, but not all the way there.

What ultimately happens is that the small towns die, and these folks are the last people living there. In towns like these, people own their homes, often outright. They're often not much, but they generally own them. When they hit 50 and lose their jobs, their kids move to the larger towns or to the nearby city to find work. The parents stay in the little town and scrape by, using social services and doing part-time jobs, canning their vegetable garden, hunting, fishing, and bartering. To cut costs they generally forgo any maintenance on their home, and often will only buy 10+ year old vehicles and try to keep them running as long as they can.

Ultimately, with no kids staying in the town, and with no real money coming into the town, the businesses start dying off. With the businesses and houses all falling into disrepair, the town dies. The few people who still have money then have to decide if it's worth staying or giving up their house, because they won't be able to sell it. And as you noted, good luck finding a living wage elsewhere, even if you have the money to pack up and leave.

There's a reason anger and fear really works with the rural, conservative voter. Why a cultural war really resonates. For a lot of them, they're watching their world crumble around them, and they're seeing the place they call home disappearing. My family hates that I moved away to the city, but the bank closed up, the pharmacy closed up, the diner was in such bad shape that when the owner died nobody wanted to take it over....it was clear that I didn't have a future in the places my family has always called home. And when my parents are gone, probably half their town will be gone, and I won't have a reason to go back.

What scares me is that this isn't constrained to small towns - look at Detroit for an example of it on the large scale. With the migration to cities, we're setting ourselves up for a lot of Detroits. I agree that there is rather a lot of historical disruptions. I'm concerned that we're setting ourselves up for one the scale of which we've never seen before.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

..and we currently have a full employment economy
That, sadly, is not as true as you think it is. If you account for the people who have given up looking for work entirely and others that can't be counted, the unemployment figures are much much higher than they report them as.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?
Sure, we can do that. All we have to do is rein in Corporatism and out-of-control Capitalism. Let me know how that's working for you.
Sarcasm aside at least we have some controls on corporations now, more than we used to, workers have some rights and something of a voice. But it can still be very far from fair because corporations have the money and workers don't, so they can still be overrun by legions of lawyers and drowned in legal bills trying to fight things. It rapidly becomes a war of financial attrition.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

Here's the thing: I believe we need to get away to some extent at least from what you're referring to as 'allocation efficiency'. People matter, and having entire swaths of your population left out in the cold (literally and figuratively) in the long run isn't good for your society as a whole. 'Profit above all else' doesn't serve your society-as-a-whole, it only serves your company/corporation.
If you really need me to discuss how it is that leaving people to starve and die isn't good for your society and country we can get into that, but I'm hoping it's self-explanatory.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[dryeo]

It was also a time of enclosing the commons. The rich discovered they could pass laws making common areas private, and they did this in a large way, forcing many farmers off the land, removing the little wealth they had and forcing them into the city where there was basically no work available.
6.8 million acres enclosed between 1604 and 1914 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Losing your livelihood, even if it was subsistence farming, was getting poorer and one of the reasons that the industrial revolution was a nightmare for the majority for generations.
Things didn't really get better until the workforce was reduced in size, child labour laws removed a lot of labourers, shorter work weeks spread the labour around, for a while, women were moved from labourers to stay at home moms. Wars also created a lot of demand.
There was also large amounts of emigration (both forced and voluntarily) to countries with lots of basically free land.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[omfglearntoplay]

Mod this up somebody! I have never lived in such a place, but I can see how it happens well from your description. I'm lucky some of my relatives in small towns had solid government retirement plans, otherwise they'd be in trouble just due to rising cost of living and healthcare. I can only imagine what those isolated towns have to deal with.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

Anyhow, the point is that perhaps instead of simply throwing a lot of people in the trash, then having to deal with them when they revolt, it might be a better idea to plan ahead.
Exactly; you get it.
Ironic that we're talking about 'automation' and 'robots' allegedly taking people's jobs, when corporations all-too-often treat humans like robots -- and as you say, 'throw them in the trash' like some broken or obsolete robots. Humans cannot become obsolete. You might even consider the concept to be an extreme form of racism: not based on color of skin, ethnicity, or anything you'd normally associate with 'racism'. I can't even find the right word or words to describe this concept that just came into my head but I think you get the idea.
In any case: yeah, people are not just machines, that you can toss on the scrap-heap, and expect them to just sit there and quietly die, they'll fight to survive. Pressed hard enough they'll turn to crime just to survive. Concentrate large enough numbers of them, leaders will emerge from the crowd; now you've got an army, and an insurgency/civil war on your hands. Has happened before, can happen again. I'd like to think that any government with any sense at all and any ability to think beyond the next election cycle will see the precursors of such a thing and take steps to ensure that people aren't just tossed aside.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

Listen, FUD spreader: there is no point in making people panic. What's going to happen is going to happen. What we need to do about it is mitigate the negative effects as much as possible. That means pressuring corporate types to actually give a damn about people instead of just profits. It's what's best for society. So how about you and all the other Negative Nellies stop being gloom-and-doom? It serves NO ONE.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[apoc.famine]

The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them, and we've never been able to, so just trust that they will happen. Who could have predicted 100 years ago that voice actor for GPS would be a job? That web design would be a job?"

To some extent I agree. If you'd asked me even a decade ago if "Social Media Personality" could be a viable career, I would have said no. Yet hundreds or thousands (maybe more? IDK) are making millions of dollars doing that now, with an order or magnitude more making enough that they've quit their day job.

The real issue is that when the jobs of the future (that we can't predict existing) suddenly do exist, our first stab at doing them won't involve humans. When we need a digital janitor for our holodeck, we're not going to slap someone in a motion capture suit, wire them up with a mic, and have them do all the tasks so we can digitize them. That's going to be constructed and automated from the start. When we invent an algae-based superfood which mimics prime rib and grows in vats, we're not going to have humans hanging it on a hook in a freezer and hacking chunks of it off. I doubt that it's going to be somebody's job to tune the fins in my hover-car.

There will definitely be tons of new things that need to be done in the future that we can't predict. However, it's really unlikely that most of those things will be done by humans.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[ShanghaiBill]

The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them

Actually, we can predict exactly where the new jobs will be.

Grocery stores spend 14% of their sales on labor, and those with self-checkout have reduced their labor costs by 25%, or 3.5% of sales.

Since the grocery business is very competitive, much of those savings has gone into lower food price inflation. The rest has gone into dividends for shareholders. Either way, that extra money goes into someone's pocket.

What do they spend that extra money on? That is where the new jobs are.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[HeckRuler]

every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit, and it's always temporary.

YEAH! Last time it was only three generations that the previously middle class weave guilders suffered soul-crushing 50% unemployment. Quite temporary.

Thank GOD the rustbelt isn't a thing. And I'm sure the decades-long trend of people moving away rural farms is just a temporary shift. I'm sure.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[Ol Olsoc]

The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them

Actually, we can predict exactly where the new jobs will be.

Grocery stores spend 14% of their sales on labor, and those with self-checkout have reduced their labor costs by 25%, or 3.5% of sales.

Since the grocery business is very competitive, much of those savings has gone into lower food price inflation. The rest has gone into dividends for shareholders. Either way, that extra money goes into someone's pocket.

What do they spend that extra money on? That is where the new jobs are.

Not where, but what employment? Your concept of the Job Creators and Trickle Down Theory as the driving engine of more jobs being created than destroyed is interesting.

My last 35 plus years in the workforce has shown me that the employee is considered the enemy, a parasite that is stealing money from the pockets of the stockholders. Supervisors can make extra money by eliminating employees. One I worked for for a short time bragged about it.

This isn't trying to make money by inventing new gewgaws using the newfangled industrial machines, this is a direct attempt to eliminate labor.

This automation is inevitable, but if we head into it without understanding that once the goal of eliminating humans from the work pool succeeds, we better either have a massive depopulation program, or perhaps use the permanently unemployed in a latter day Hunger games scenario and let them kill each other off for our entertainment. Otherwise, the poor will continue stealing money from the pockets of the stockholders.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[ShanghaiBill]

Not where, but what employment?

Since self-checkouts were introduced, every American family has an extra $10 per month through lower than expected food-price inflation.

How do you spend that marginal $10? That is where the new jobs were created.

Different families likely spend the extra money differently. Some go out to a restaurant more often, some buy an extra book on Amazon, some save for a cave diving excursion, etc. The jobs are diffused through the economy. But that does not make them any less real.

Your concept of the Job Creators and Trickle Down Theory as the driving engine of more jobs being created than destroyed is interesting.

Cheaper groceries are not "trickle down". Since the poor spend more of their income on groceries than the rich, if anything, it is trickle up.

It has also been happening for 300 years, with a 20-fold increase in living standards, so it is not a "theory".

My last 35 plus years in the workforce has shown me that the employee is considered the enemy

Perhaps you should chose your jobs more carefully. My employer paid my college tuition, paid for continuing education, and even sent me on a Perl-Hacker cruise to Alaska back in the 1990s (with Larry Wall onboard). I have considered most of my bosses to be personal friends. My former boss's daughter babysits my kids.

If everyone you worked with for 35 years was an asshole, you may be misidentifying the problem. Perhaps you should do some self examination.

1.5M ... is that more or less than...

[hcs_$reboot]

Brexit?

For a scarier headline

[93 Escort Wagon]

Remove the “i” from the first word.

Re:For a scarier headline

[sheramil]

What's threatening about one automaton?

Re:For a scarier headline

[stealth_finger]

What's threatening about one automaton?

I'm guessing it's a really big one.

This is an opportunity. Not a problem.

[91degrees]

Automation has been a thing since Marc Brunel automated pulley block production in 1802. Henry Ford's massive increase in automation made cars so much cheaper that employment increased. Automation does not replace people. It increases productivity.

But it should replace people. After 200 years of automation, I'm still working an 8 hour day. why? Why can't we cut our hours down. Split every job in two, and let people do a 20 hour week. We have the technology. Why are we still selling hours of our lives to faceless corporations?

Re:This is an opportunity. Not a problem.

[HeckRuler]

It increases productivity and displaces workers from jobs. It's good for society on the whole but a REAL kick in the pants for the worker that used to have a job. The young can retrain (and hopefully had enough time seeing it coming to avoid the industry), some of the old can take an early retirement and tighten their belt, the ones in the middle are fucked.

You are correct that it's not all a zero-sum game. The economy can grow and shrink. If the economy grows, half of that is the fact that more people are buying and there's greater need for production, which leads to more jobs somewhere else. That's no longer true for, say, lights-out manufacturing. Having more sales does not increase labor hours. But of course they buy raw material, and we don've have fully automated mines and smelters and such. ...yet. But productivity is being seperated from employment. If tomarrow we had twice as many mouths to feed and farmland became critical and we had to increase food production ASAP.... we wouldn't really have that many more farmers.

After 200 years of automation, I'm still working an 8 hour day. why?

Because your grandfather (or great grandfather) fought and bled fighting against the company store to ensure you only have to work 8 hour days. But a lot of people ditch that victory and put in more hours for some ungodly reason.

Why can't we cut our hours down. Split every job in two, and let people do a 20 hour week. We have the technology. Why are we still selling hours of our lives to faceless corporations?

Because the company wants them to do so. Because we still live in a capitalist society where it not only matters how well you perform absolutely, but relatively to everyone else who would out-compete you. They have all the same automated tools that you do and if you ever slack, they'll undercut you and take your job. As intended. This is not a critic on America. The rest of the world also operates on this principle. Even China now. If you stop working as hard, or the chinese work harder, or cheaper, we'll have trade imbalance and they'll rise as a nation while we diminish. *cough*. Or at least not rise as much as we could. Which, honestly, isn't so bad. Raising China out of poverty has had GREAT outcomes on world metrics.

Because every alternative to capitalistic principles has lead to economic collapse and mass starvation.

Re:This is an opportunity. Not a problem.

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Minor correction - after 200 years of automation, a lot of dumb Americans are still working 12+ hours a day. Why?

But really, you have to ask yourself -

[swell]

Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?

Humans need food, water, shelter and energy. Everything else is extra; non-essential. If you are producing essentials and doing it in a way that machines can't easily duplicate- no worries! If you are producing pretty fashion items, mindless amusements, sexy sports cars, or kitchen appliances that produce an exotic coffee product using proprietary supplies ... well you might be expendable.

The first world economy requires ever increasing consumer consumption to survive and provide jobs for us and profits for the wealthy. It's a delicate balance. If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.

Fishing & farming are the essential activities. Building skills for homes and watercraft. Repair skills for tractors & irrigation systems. Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.

Re:But really, you have to ask yourself -

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to make bank, learn a skill that not many other people have.

Lots of people can farm and fish. That's great if you want to earn minimum wage. Your "apocalypse" is theoretical, and preparing for that non-event will damage your chances of being successful in the real world.

Re:But really, you have to ask yourself -

[houghi]

Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?

Define essential.

If it is just to survive, people have done that in caves, so unless you are a hunter, you are NOT really essential? A doctor? Not essential, because the human race will survive without them. Just produce more offspring.

OTOH, having movie theaters and other form of entertainment mke live better for a lot of people, so they can be seen as essential as well.

HAM radio operators are essential? No they are not. People have survived longer with them than without them. The fact that you bought one for the Y2K collaps of civilisation does not mean anything.

To me, as a human being, humans are essential, not their jobs. I work for a living. I do not live for my work. There is plenty to go around to cut working hours in half and spend the gained time with friends or family or whatever we desire.

And the fact that some jobs will survive (there are still people that train horses) does not mean they are essential.

Fishing and farming has reduced in workforce a LOT. Building does not require as much people as e.g. in Egypt. We could build that pyramid, faster, cheaper better and with way less people right now. We have made things way bigger than the piramyds already. The need to repair has gone down in both time and cost. Automation of irigation has been going on for a long time. As well as the repair of them. Just look how much people the Netherlands needs now compared to when the windmills where still a thing.

The jobs will survive, but not even close in the numbers that exist now.

So we need to get our heads out of our asses and stop thinking that the only valuable people are those who do "essential" jobs and that the rest is waste. Instead we should look at the humans and see how we, as a species, spread the wealth and the free time, so we can become more human.

That, or a big war or revolution where a lot of people get killed and we need to build and rebuild. That sure sounds as the easier option.

Re:But really, you have to ask yourself -

[HeckRuler]

Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large?

Yes, otherwise they wouldn't have a business model and wouldn't be in business and wouldn't pay me.

Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?

For this price-point and manufacturing capabilities at time of contract, sure. Otherwise the client would have gone elsewhere.
"Unique" isn't all that essential. A banana is a banana no matter how many are on the shelf. It doesn't have to be "Essenetial", it just has to be "Worth it".

Humans need food, water, shelter and energy.

Humans need a lot. See Maslow's heirarchy of needs.

Everything else is extra; non-essential

What is the purpose of civilization if not for recreation and art? What's the point of it all? There is a grand deal. A massive bit of bribary. Humans will be productive if you REWARD them. What's the reward I get for going to work? What can I buy with this money?

If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.

Parts of it, for sure.

Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.

Ok, now you're just fucking with us.

Here we go again

[xenobyte]

Back in the olden days (the 1970's) I actually wrote an essay about this phenomena. It was a huge fear among typesetters back then that computers were making them obsolete, and sure enough - that profession is all but gone today. The fear was that all jobs would be automated, making everybody unemployed.

It's easy to generalize from typesetters to everybody, but then - as now - people didn't (or couldn't) think on. Because we're not all unemployed today. Quite the opposite! - Here in Denmark we're at the highest employment level ever. Never before in history there was this many people with jobs, both in numbers and in percentage of the population. There are still people without jobs, but fewer and fewer.

What happened? - Exactly what I said back then: Automation generates a lot of new jobs because somebody has to invent, design, build and maintain the machines. The machines also create new needs and new opportunities. A lot of other new stuff gets invented all the time, and things change. Nobody in the 1970's could have predicted that 'influencers' (on social media) would be a thing, or even that there would be 'social media' with all that entails (servers, data centers, power supply, cooling, support, monitoring, security etc.). The funny thing is that this constant change has always been there. There were no mechanics until the combustion engine was invented. There were no librarians until the printed book was invented. There were no carpenters until we leaned to work with wood. At the same time most blacksmiths went out of business when horses were replaced with horsepower in engines, and video rental went out of business when streaming came along. Times change but so far we've always been able to fill the void with new jobs serving a new era. I don't see any reason that this will ever stop.

Yes, it means that people will have to find new jobs in new professions when their old one goes obsolete, but then again - it has always been like that.

Re: Here we go again

[aussie_a]

Yes, automation in the past has created sufficient new jobs to compensate. Is it always guaranteed to do that though?

Re:Here we go again

[dryeo]

Here in Denmark we're at the highest employment level ever. Never before in history there was this many people with jobs, both in numbers and in percentage of the population.

Before the industrial revolution, employment was pretty close to 100%. By 5 years of age, you were working, even if only on the farm. If you were crippled, you had a job begging.
Today, I bet a good chunk of Denmark's population is involved in things like getting educated instead of going to work at the age of 5.

Re:Here we go again

[apoc.famine]

Yes, it means that people will have to find new jobs in new professions when their old one goes obsolete, but then again - it has always been like that.

It has been like that, but it's not going to be like that in the future.

I don't see how you can expect people to get paid to learn a new profession when they're most likely going to be the more expensive, slower, and less reliable option for doing that job.

If this was one sector that we were talking about, you might have a point. The problem is that it's all sectors, and in any scenario I can think of, any new job sector is going to be based around automation, robots, and machine learning/AI from the get-go. Nobody is going to come up with a new industry without immediately trying to stick AI into it. Nobody is gong to make a start-up that relies heavily on unskilled labor. That's not going to get venture capital dollars, and it's not going to be cost effective.

Anything new is going to start with minimal humans doing the work. There aren't going to be new professions. At least not enough to provide jobs for everyone about to lose their jobs due to automation.

Re:Here we go again

[strikethree]

Times change but so far we've always been able to fill the void with new jobs serving a new era. I don't see any reason that this will ever stop.

There are enough resources on this planet for everyone. That is not the problem. The problem is that automation changes things. Well, changing things is not really the problem. What the real problem is that things are set up that when they change, fewer and fewer people benefit from those changes and more and more people find themselves without resources. The people who have the lion's share of the resources are ensuring that more and more of the resources that are gathered, accrue to them. That leaves fewer resources for the rest of the people.

People are dying every day from lack of resources. Millions, maybe even billions, are having the natural path of their lives warped and distorted in negative ways because of the resource distribution issues... and since might makes right, the trend of fewer and fewer people being able to gather any resources for themselves will increase. At some point, the increase in inbalance will become exponential and the human race will suffer yet another bottle neck, where we drop down to a population of 8 thousand people again.

As long as resource distribution is equitable, automation provides great opportunities. As soon as people don't get out at least as much as they put in, society will crumble. Who wastes time doing things that do not bring benefit of some sort?

Ob Douglas Adams quote

[DrYak]

Quick rule of thumb:
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
The is what the public has believed for at least three centuries.

To quote Douglas Adams:

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Social Welfare

[DrYak]

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

...in a society that completely lacked any form of social welfare, social assistance to help you transition, unemployment benefits to make the end meets until you find yourself some other source of income, etc.

Where basically if you didn't have education and some economies in the bank (i.e.: was rich enough to even *have* a bank account to begin with), Society's only opinion was "sucks to be with you".

Yes, this time, this is exactly going to go the exact same way as the dystopian past of Dickens' time.

Re:Social Welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Only it was so woefully inadequate that it might just as well not have existed.

Re:Social Welfare

[Rick Schumann]

..Society's only opinion was "sucks to be with you".
If I'm not mistaken, that was only the beginning of their 'opinion'. Then there was Debtors' Prisons, indentured servitude (a slightly sanitized way of saying 'slavery'), no minimum wage, and so on -- and that was just if you stayed on the right side of The Law; if you didn't, then your life was more-or-less over as anything resembling a human being, because you'd go to prison and maybe never leave there alive. People think prison can be hard on people now, but back then animals on a farm being raised for slaughter were treated better than convicts, there was no medical care for convicts, no programs of any kind to rehabilitate them, it was just punish punish punish, and if that killed you or turned you into a complete monster, then that's too bad, you're a convict, you didn't deserve any 'second chances' (order of magnitude worse than it is today). As an aside to the subject the thing we have today that begins to rival the barbarism of those times is the 'for-profit prisons', and the jacked-up, skewed legal system we have, that profiles and targets specific demographics, almost ensuring that they end up back in The System -- and are used as virtual slave labor in these 'for profit' prisons. But I digress..

Re:Social Welfare

[Rick Schumann]

Sure, sure.. and it had strings attached to it.

Self checkout

[stealth_finger]

Self checkout isn't too bad. Free bags at least, if they want me to do their work then I ain't paying for the bags and they really gave a shit instead of charging for bags they'd just make them out of something else that is biodegradable. Oh, we only do 50p bags for life now. Yeah? How's that going help the problem?

Re:Self checkout

[johnsie]

Thankfully we're not all thieving bastards. The point of the bag for life is that it can be re-used several times and doesn't go into holes easily. The numbers speak for themselves as we are now using a lot less bags. Of course there are still a few retards who don't understand basic mathematics and resort to bag stealing because they lack any intellect and the whole thought process behind all of this goes over their heads.

Re:Self checkout

[stealth_finger]

So the point now is to drive bag for life sales? It's one thing to take them when going shopping, but you expect everyone to carry around at least one at all times in case they go to a shop? If I go over to tesco at lunch and didn't think to bring my bag for life, which doesn't neatly fold up or even scrunch up and fit in my pocket, if I buy more than will fit in my pocket I'm stung for the big bag, which doesn't then get used as a bin liner and complete its cycle. If it was actually the biodegradability of those bags which is really the issue why not change them to a biodegradable material, and how much of the landfill is actually going to degrade in a reasonable amount of time anyway? I hear they used to use paper and that worked quite well until we decided it's better to use oil than trees for that kind of thing. I'd be happy enough to pay the 5p for a plastic bag because they are now making them out of a more expensive but better material but they aren't are they? They are just putting a price on them hoping you'll switch to an even worse option and when that didn't work both my local tesco and sainsburys at least stopped doing them all together. So, they are going to put me out while making me do the work for them so they can save a few quid to add to their profits you're damn right I'm stealing the fucking bags.

Maybe not.

[Qbertino]

What some experts are saying is that this round of tools is special in that they are better and finding new tools than us humans.
So this time might be different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Maybe not.

[Rick Schumann]

Or it might not.

What new jobs created?

[sjbe]

About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected

They are at risk for losing their CURRENT job. The question they conveniently do not ask is what new jobs will be created by the automation. Automation very rarely takes jobs without creating new ones somewhere else. The computer I'm typing this on is a perfect example. It's clearly automation. We no longer have large secretarial pools working on typewriters and taking shorthand and distributing memos. But the PC clearly has been a net job creator. Vast swaths of our economy are busy doing jobs that didn't even exist 40 years ago. Industrial robots do the same thing. They take away certain types of assembly line jobs but they facilitate jobs managing, repairing, the robots as well as warehousing, transport, logistics, marketing, sales, etc for the extra production volume that they create. The net effect is usually more jobs when all the dust settles. Of course some people experience some rough times in the transition but the evidence shows that they mostly figure it out and find new work elsewhere. People are very adaptable - far more so than any machine we can design.

Re:What new jobs created?

[dryeo]

Sometimes there's long periods of job shortages before those new jobs materialize such as the 3 generations (70 years) after the Luddites.
We've also shrank the labour force and continue to do so to make up for those missing jobs. Kids no longer go to work at 5 years of age, instead going to school for longer and longer chunks of their life. Lots of people on disability too.
Generally the work week has also been cut by quite a few hours with most people working closer to 40 hours then 80 hours a week.
In the past there was also a bunch of new lands opened up for the unemployed, you could go to N. America or Australia and homestead for example.

So let's use spoons to dig holes instead of a JCB

[johnsie]

We could hire 100 men with spoons to dig a hole, or we could use a digger.

They'll be happy though

[OneHundredAndTen]

For they will have taken back control.

Interesing timing, just before Brexit

[Laxator2]

I would pay more attention to such news if it wasn't so bloody obvious that it is trying to inflame things before Brexit.
So, what now ? Blame the f***ing immigrants yet again for the job losses ?
At the same time whining that there are fewer foreign construction workers around, and therefore those still around charge more for their services ?
Or maybe, just maybe, murder Jo Cox a second time. That will fix everythiing.

Do you WANT these jobs?

[RogueWarrior65]

Seriously, does anyone really WANT to do the jobs that automation is supposedly taking? Do you want to be a supermarket checkout person, a tire-fitter, a fruit/veg picker?

Re:Quick, get more foreign workers!!

[bjwest]

Every single modern economy needs loads of foreign workers to function. Why? Too many jobs, not enough willing workers.

Fixed that for you. There's plenty of people to do the work but no one is willing to pick the veggies or sew garments for the wages it takes to make it affordable for everyone to eat and clothe themselves.

Do not support while you still have a choice.

[ikhider]

Companies that use self-checkout are also the same that sell goods based on exploited labour and who use 'lawful' income tax evasion as in not paying their fair share. In addition, hired labour is also 'gamed'. What do I mean by that? When people are made to work full time but are still "temps" on paper or are "interns" or whose hours are played with so they are not eligible for paid overtime or a sustainable living. While there is a choice, do not support these entities until there is no longer choice. Then by definition, you are under oppression.

Re: Trump

[ranton]

I voted for Obama and Bernie but would definitely be voting Trump just to get the arrogance wiped out of the Democratic party. It's comepletely on a witch hunt and been off its meds for a long time now. What the heck happened to them actually governing instead of being armchair lawyers? I mean it really is that horrible. I doubt anyone is under the illusion the republican party has much going for it. It is just that the Democratic party is even worse.

This hardly sounds believable, unless the main reason you voted for Obama and Bernie was because they weren't the establishment instead of actually believing in their platform. After Bush Sr. lost to Clinton, the Republican party's only significant platform agenda is doing what is in the best interest of the Republican party. This is one issue that has nothing to do with Trump but was instead put in place by Gingrich and put into overdrive by McConnell. The current Republican party is virtually defined by the concept of winning politically instead of actually governing. It's hard to see how anyone you doesn't already have strong conservative leaning political views could claim Democrats are the ones not governing.

I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans as recently as 2012, but after tactics such as holding up the Merrick Garland nomination anyone willing to associate with the Republican party has essential shown they are unfit for leadership. For voters who are strongly pro-gun or pro-life or anti-LGBT I can certainly see the appeal of the Republican party, as they have latched onto nearly every single issue voter platform there is. But for anyone who saw any appeal in Obama or Bernie, if you see any appeal in Trump you simply aren't paying attention.