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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2659 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I see an opportunity to replace certain human labor at my workplace with humanoid robots. For background, I am an equipment engineer at a Fortune 100 manufacturing company and think my job is somewhat low-risk of getting automated soon.

Pros:

  • Good for my career at the company
  • Improves my skillset in case I ever want to switch jobs. I predict humanoid robots will become much more common as more companies adopt them and their skills widen and improve.

Cons:

  • I am putting people out of a job. This would likely substitute for people instead of complement them. The company recently laid off 100s of employees and soon thereafter announced using a robot dog for some of their tasks. Is this just a form of natural selection?
  • Can look bad on me if the robot isn’t as good as promised. There are ways to temper expectations that I plan to do during my pitch to management.

What are The Motte’s opinions on this in regards to:

  • My career development
  • The moral implications of putting low-skilled people out of work
  • Anything else

You're going to have to link me those robot dogs being used for anything practical. I haven't seen any use for them other than toys yet. What could they do that a cartbot couldn't do better?

It’s on our company’s intranet, but IIRC (I’m away from my work computer for the next week) they attached sensors for detecting abnormal conditions with temperature, pressure, etc on various systems.

While I’m sure the headline sensationalizes their results (and the dog just looks cool), the point is not the medium, but the fact that the robot is doing something.

That's actually really cool. I always figured it'd be cheaper to have networked sensors everywhere, but maybe a pipe-climbing trouble-checking robot would be more cost effective in some situations

You can start by thinking about how you might be able to complement the existing workers. Is there a way that the machines could be made useful for them, instead of replacing them? Is there other work, other bottlenecked parts of the process that might be able to use more labour? I know you said no, but perhaps with a little more ingenuity you'll see something.

Also, for my own personal satisfaction, could you indicate what humanoids you're interested in? I'm on record as being very down on humanoids for maintenance/controllability reasons, is there something new I've missed?

I grossly misspoke in my original post: I think complementation would happen first, then eventually substitution. I am unsure of exact timelines here and venture to say 10+ years with low confidence. My immediate “moral concern” is that the complementation benefits would be enough to justify firing workers sooner because now everyone is X times as productive.

I haven’t done substantial research, but the Figure AI robots seem promising. And while I suspect their press releases are overhyping their results (much like BD’s Atlas hasn’t been widely implemented to my knowledge despite being introduced many years ago), they have actual production units in factories doing simple work, which is a plus in my mind. Open to any more thoughts you have!

The year is 2050. Everything useful has been automated, so people are employed in doing useless things. First it was, to no one's surprise, lawyers. But the public first really became aware in 2035. Tesla had just released diaper-changing robots, and a coalition of nursing home and daycare workers arrived at the Michigan state capital. They gave hours of spurious testimony as to the need for a human to do it, and the legislature voted to keep high mandatory ratios of care staff. The idea soon spread; lots of people are employed in sitting around to meet staffing minima at fully automated workplaces. There's also people whose jobs are to add the human touch; waiters, customer service call takers, etc. But a plurality of people sit in a room doing, theoretically, nothing.

Mental health issues skyrocket. Obviously, people don't literally do nothing even if they're being paid for it, but they don't do anything productive either. At the shittiest jobs drug use is rampant, slightly higher up the ladder people gossip, gamble, play video games on the clock- the same things they do off the clock, except sober. There are 'doctors' and 'engineers' who are forbidden from doing any medical or engineering work- supposedly, they watch the robot doing it, but in practice they argue about politics online, watch sports, buy cheap junk from automated factories with a cafeteria full of 'workers' playing poker and giving each other terrible advice. All of these people are self-medicating, or in therapy, or something.

Of course, for those who can't stand being paid to do nothing, they can work customer service- people will just scream at the robot until they have a person to scream at instead, after all- or sponge off of welfare. In well functioning countries there's now a UBI paid partly in kind(eg, allotments of staple foods), but in the US there's simply an expansion of existing welfare programs. All it takes to get on section 8 is a willingness to live in it now; there's vast tenement highrises with open cockfighting in the hallways. More responsible citizens can simply turn in a tax return and get a credit that's enough to live on for the year, at least in flyover, but only in a lump sum payment- those bad at budgeting need to go back to section eight and foodstamps. And of course, citizens who are quiet, clean, but not good with their money can get disability. On the whole, the latter two groups are much happier than those with fake jobs; many find alternative sources of meaning in hobbies, friends, communities- and for the majority, they can at least get baked and play videogames openly, without lying about it.

By the way, I really, truly (unfortunately) think this is the way mass automation is going to go.

You don’t think this is significant rose colored glasses? Responsible citizens having a means of separating themselves from the crackheads isn’t how welfare works in the real world.

Are you running a business, or a charity?

My perspective is that your "career development" is mostly illusory. If automating part of your process results in a better product or cheaper manufacturing, perhaps you will get a bonus? Certainly you will get a resume point. Perhaps it will get you a promotion? A raise? You don't seem to think it will result in you, too, being replaced by a machine, at least not immediately, so in terms of self interest it seems like an obvious choice.

As for the moral implications of making low-skilled people unemployed, like... if you don't do it, eventually someone else will, except you will get none of the benefits while still suffering all the possible downsides. There may be public policy arguments about this that matter from a moral or legal perspective, but unless it is your job to make or enforce public policy, then you don't really have a seat at that table.

In the medium-term future (two or three centuries at most), I think that we either get widespread universal basic income, or we get rampant Luddism. Authoritarian governments and relatively culturally homogeneous nations seem likely to weather that transition better than pluralistic democracies, as identitarian competition for resources and handouts ramps up toward infinity. You will contribute to this process no matter what you choose to do in your current role; the best you can do is what is best for yourself, as that is what you have the most control over and the greatest understanding of.

As for the moral implications of making low-skilled people unemployed, like... if you don't do it, eventually someone else will, except you will get none of the benefits while still suffering all the possible downsides.

This is the argument people have used to rationalize all manner of immoral things since time immemorial. It doesn't really hold water, though. If something is immoral, then it doesn't matter that someone else will do the same thing. Morality is about your conduct, not what others do.

As it happens, I don't think that automating jobs is immoral. But I think that if one does, the "someone else will do it" argument doesn't fly.

That's not the work I intended that phrase to do. It was more of a factual observation about the extent to which outcomes are actually (not) within OP's control, which was the overall point of my post.

Specifically, "ought" implies "can." Ensuring that some people are employed might be the right thing to do; say for the purposes of argument that it is in this case. If in such a case it's not really up to you that those people will stay employed, it can't really be a moral requirement that you keep them employed. The claim "if you don't do it, eventually someone else will" is not a justification for any particular course of action, but an empirical claim about the extent to which a certain outcome is likely (not) within OP's control.

I have high-ish (75%) confidence I would get a nice raise and promotion and low-ish confidence (20%) potential opportunity to lead this initiative across the company if it went well, so not entirely illusory, but I see your point—I’m a firm believer that large companies rarely proportionally reward their workers.

I agree that someone else will do it, but it just sits slightly at odds with me. “Git gud” is a motto I live by and expect others too (to a certain extent), but it’s a bit more difficult when said others are standing right in front of me chatting about their families they support on the salary that could (will eventually?) be taken away by these robots.

My asking here was more of a “please explain why and tell me what I’m wanting to do is good” along with a catch-all option for extra thoughts.

My conviction is that in the future, much shorter term than your medium, countries that embrace automation to a fuller extent will utterly dominate and destroy those that don't. Will it be authoritarian or democratic ones? I can see it go either way. Democratic unions blocking even automatic parking gates at the docks, versus an autocrat saying that a robot-staffed megafactory for making drones is being built, and those who protest will be the first to experience its products. Or a democratically-minded government allowing unlimited productivity explosion if the owners are forced to dole out a pittance of the gains as universal basic income, versus a paternalistic dictator protecting his people from unemployment.

In the medium term, I think that the concept of a government will lose its meaning. The division will be between those individuals who control a force capable of credibly threatening other individuals controlling a trillion drones, and those who don't.

The moral implications of putting low-skilled people out of work

You can't hold back economic forces on your own. If a job is automatable, it will eventually be automated. in any case, automation is just a means to make human workers more productive. Which is what economic growth is, fundamentally.

In the long term, the way to make poor people richer is by increasing worker productivity in the countries those poor people live in, and therefore GDP per capita. Poor people in rich countries are wealthier than average people in poor countries because the rich countries have higher worker productivity, which benefits the poorest workers through cost disease and cheaper goods/services.

I honestly think you have a moral duty to automate those jobs. The benefits will outweigh the costs, even if said benefits are diffuse and the costs are concentrated.

To partially copy from another reply: I agree that someone else will do it, but it just sits slightly at odds with me. “Git gud” is a motto I live by and expect others too (to a certain extent), but it’s a bit more difficult when said others are standing right in front of me chatting about their families they support on the salary that could (will eventually?) be taken away by these robots.

I also resonate with cheaper production results in everyone being richer, and if everyone asked these questions before doing anything we would be wayyyyy less rich than we are now.

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