They'll be deprecated as soon as self driving cars become viable. The same goes for most jobs like this, technology will catch up eventually and make them obsolote.
I'm still waiting to see cashiers disappear in supermarkets. Or bakers, since bread and cake production could be completely automatized by now. Strangely they are not going away. I wonder why...
People who predict extinction of jobs are usually wrong.
Even in the tiny rural community I live in, cashiers are being replaced by automated systems in large stores. Smaller stores will probably continue to have cashiers until forever, but we're not talking about 100% of cashiers going away, we're talking about some percentage of that. If half of the available jobs in a market vanish, that will have significant and devastating effects, regardless of how they're lost. Especially for jobs like cashiering, because there are limited places for cashiers to go, and this problem will eventually effect lots of jobs that have no up front professional training requirement (and perhaps many that do, but that's its own discussion.)
It's only a matter of time, for example, until Domino's pizza production is automated. The only reason we haven't seen this yet is because hiring humans is cheaper than solving the complex automation problem this presents. But technology continues to get cheaper. When that swings the other way, your pizza will get made by robots. Pizza delivery by robots is already a solved problem, just waiting for the costs to skew the right way. In short: at the speed at which technological problems get solved, it's unlikely we will have even adequately discussed the ramifications of the problem before it arrives on our doorstep.
I don't know how it is in America, I live in the Netherlands, but I haven't interacted with a cashier in a supermarket for a very long time. Every supermarket has self-checkout, and still some cashiers for people who don't want it, of course. But a lot less cashiers than a few years ago.
You grab a scanner at the entrance, scan all your purchages and then you put the scanner away and pay at a terminal. The terminal prints out your receipt, which you can scan to open the exit. You will sometimes (this has never happened to me, but I've seen it to other people) be picked by the system for a random check to see if you're not stealing anything.
In the US, our self-checkout is a machine that stops the transaction and complains if you so much as breathe on the scale. It's terribly awkward to use, and so I much prefer to use a live cashier rather than suffer the incessant blathering of a machine that doesn't even bag my groceries for me.
I've not seen those machines. The ones I've seen you just scan everything as you put it in your bag, and then you pay. No cashier will bag your groceries for you either, and they will laugh at you if you ask. You do that yourself here, either way.
That's interesting about the bagging. One of the bigger issues with this in the US is that people are just really poor grocery baggers most of the time compared to someone whose job it is.
When there are only a handful of these self-checkouts, you end up with a situation where it is often quicker to wait for the line with the cashier and bagger because they just process customers SO MUCH FASTER.
In college I knew someone who was a grocery bagger for a while, and when we'd go to the store he'd bag his stuff and I'd bag mine. The speed and thoughtfulness that went into the placement of various things in his bag was rather humbling...almost akin to watching an expert Tetris player in the zone.
So ultimately more machines could help solve the long line issue, but that is still definitely a factor as it stands today. Given that grocery stores often leave most of their checkout lanes unattended, I'd love to see more converted to self-checkout to increase overall checkout speed.
That sounds like a nice system. In the US we don't have scanners you pick up at the entrance - it's more like you do the part the cashiers used to do. You pull up to a scanner, scan everything in your cart, bag everything, then put it back in your cart and pay at the machine.
A scale underneath the bagging area keeps tabs on everything you can to make sure you're not cheating the system. (Still, I've heard stories of people checking out all produce as watermelons.)
That does sound less pleasant. Now that I'm thinking about that, I've encountered a system like that once. I think that was one of the first supermarkets trialing self-checkout. The system disappeared soon after and got replaced by what I've described.
It is quite easy to cheat the current system, though the random sampling helps some. I think someone somewhere made a decision that it is worth it to improve customer satisfaction and deal with some losses, but I have no idea.
How does that system handle produce? That's one of the big reasons why automated checkout works like it does in the US (using checkout stations and scales).
Most (all?) supermarkets require you to weigh produce yourself, even when making use of regular checkout. There are several scales with a bunch of buttons in the produce section, you put your produce of preference on there and press the button to identify it. Then you get a sticker with a barcode/price based on the produce type and weight.
I scan the item and put it in my bag. This is less work than putting it in a cart, waiting for the cashier to scan everything and then I pack it in my bag. I'm done a lot faster and have never even thought of it being any more work on my side.
It may help that we never had people to pack your bags for you, which some countries seem to have.
Well in Japan the cashier does a lot more things for you. First they scan stuff. Then they place the items in a different cart in a proper order so that nothing is squashed by whatever is up or down, which makes it easier for you to pack things before you go. They also cut the bread in slices if you wish, or cut some extremities of the larger vegetables for your convenience.
Ah. Here the cashiers have only ever scanned your groceries, and put them on a small conveyor belt that moves them to the side. You'll have to pack your bag yourself, and bread usually comes pre-sliced. I've also seen non-sliced bread being sold, but that is usually accompanied by a machine where you can have it sliced prior to purchase.
And people who refuse to see it are usually blind...
The supermarkets I go to have greatly reduced their cashiers. In most cases by at least half, especially in small shops (3 cashiers has become 2-3 machines and one human).
As for bakers, they don't just make bread and cake.
My point is it's a pretty terrible example for you to pick. Baking is not a low-skill menial job. It's certainly not first in line in the "jobs that will get replaced by a machine" domino line.
It's actually a pretty good example because bread making can be completely automatized starting from ingredients mixing, to baking, packing and delivery to your supermarket.
yet bakers do not disappear. What's not valid about this example?
You seem to be under the impression that baker and industrial bread maker are the same job. They are not. And the latter has long been (mostly) done by machine.
This seems relevant: "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right."
> This seems relevant: "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right."
Except that it does not make sense at all.
Take 200 years ago, most folks were farmers. Take 100 years ago, there were now much more folks working somewhat qualified jobs (where they needed some actual skills) in industries. Take 50-60 years ago, with the creation of the service industries and all the jobs that came with it. And now for the past 30 years, hipsters are getting coding jobs and getting pretty good salaries despite the fact we have been living in a past century of technological revolutions.
And we are far, very far from 100% unemployment.
So your horse analogy has no ground in reality. For the most part, humans have been getting more, and better jobs on the whole, and most people commenting here are holding such higher paying, better jobs around. Thanks to technology.
> Take 50-60 years ago, with the creation of the service industries and all the jobs that came with it. And now for the past 30 years, hipsters are getting coding jobs and getting pretty good salaries despite the fact we have been living in a past century of technological revolutions.
The qualitative difference between now and 100 years ago is that those hipsters gave brains to the machines. The shift to service industries occured because machines replaced human muscle power. The hipsters started with replacing human precision, and now they're replacing human cognitive capabilities. Services sector is not safe.
It's also important to note what kinds of jobs are being created nowadays. A lot of them are "bullshit jobs" - make-believe work or elements of zero-sum-games like (big part of) advertising industry. Work has been disconnected from benefit it brings, we're literally (although usually indirectly) inventing nonsense tasks because we need to have something for people to do and not starve.
> It's also important to note what kinds of jobs are being created nowadays. A lot of them are "bullshit jobs" - make-believe work or elements of zero-sum-games like (big part of) advertising industry. Work has been disconnected from benefit it brings, we're literally (although usually indirectly) inventing nonsense tasks because we need to have something for people to do and not starve.
You think bullshit jobs are something new ? Of course not, they have always existed. Even some coders have bullshit jobs - there is probably only a fraction of jobs that actually directly bring value, among a massive amount of noise from other jobs that support the other or have indirect value to the said business.
But on the whole, there are way more "non-bullshit" jobs that there were ever before, that's why I claim you are missing the big picture. There were no scientist jobs before. There were no engineer jobs 150 years ago. There were few doctors (very few) in the same time range as well.
> that those hipsters gave brains to the machines.
and
> now they're replacing human cognitive capabilities.
No, computers are still very much stupid, there is no autonomous AI in sight - we have just been able to make them do some specific tasks very very well and much faster than humans (deep learning and the like), but in terms of flexibility and learning abilities the most advanced computer program and hardware is far behind any life form on Earth. Are you not a member of the Singularity Church ?
> because we need to have something for people to do and not starve.
People don't work anymore to bring food on the table. Food has never been cheaper. Even homeless folks have smartphones these days - the amount of excess cash that people get out of work far exceeds the money needed to get food.
> yet bakers do not disappear. What's not valid about this example?
They transform. "Bakeries" become just a pick-up point, where you buy bread that was baked in scale (probably in industrial ovens) and delivered to the store. Bakery employees nowadays have less to do with baking than McDonald's employees with frying fries (they still do something to them).
cashiers are getting extincted little by little, supermarkets all have self checkin, macdonalds rlies heavily on it, train systems in many countries have automated lines, bakers have long been replaced by industrial ovens and breads in EVERY supermarket and they are now low qualified workers helped by electronic ovens who unfreeze breads instead of workers. don't make any mistake as technology evolves it becomes cheaper to replace a low-skill worker by a robot and this trend will likely raise until it is much much much more cheaper to get a robot than a worker (this is probably already cheaper to have all selfcheckin than cashiers but companies are keeping them for social and ethical reason, my thinking being that those ethical bareers tends to get slimmer when cost difference increase)
> cashiers are getting extincted little by little,
Cashiers are still alive and well in Japan, thank you for asking.
> Supermarkets all have self checkin
Not everywhere and even where there is i see way more people queuing for the cashier queue than going for self checking but maybe it's different the Californian world or wherever you are living.
> ovens and breads in EVERY supermarket
I'm obviously talking about local breadshops in cities. they are alive and well, once again, and not going bankrupt. Quality still matters.
> train systems in many countries have automated lines
Yes, but how many have automated trains ? it's technically possible for a long time yet trains are still driven by people. It's way more simple to automate a train than a car yet it's not happening. Strange, huh ?
I'm just making observations based on real life - the world has not massively been robotised since the 90s (it has certainly happened in many manufacturing plants but the "worker"/"human face" is very resilient when it comes to local services).
You keep making wiiild claims based on "I don't see it happening (as much as you)". Don't you travel?
> I'm obviously talking about local breadshops in cities. they are alive and well, once again, and not going bankrupt. Quality still matters.
There's less. There's less of all these jobs you mention. You say in another post "but it won't go extinct" - well no, probably not, they'll still exist in some form. Horse carts also exist, but nobody's here saying "Cars have not fully replaced horses".
> It's way more simple to automate a train than a car yet it's not happening. Strange, huh ?
This is in effect all over the place. When I went to Berlin I didn't find a single subway train driver.
"It won't happen" is talk from people who didn't want to accept an eventuality a decade ago. Today, it's happening - putting your hands over your eyes is very much unproductive.
> This is in effect all over the place. When I went to Berlin I didn't find a single subway train driver.
I'm not talking about subways, I am talking about normal intercity trains. NONE of them are automated. Anywhere. Check it out.
> "It won't happen" is talk from people who didn't want to accept an eventuality a decade ago. Today, it's happening - putting your hands over your eyes is very much unproductive.
I'm not saying this is not happening, what I am saying is that it's happening at a most slower pace than what all the hipsters on HN claim it's happening, and just like everything else, we are going towards fragmentation and not complete removal of most of these jobs. So the "singularity" dream of some people here that the human race will see all of its jobs done by robots in 20 years, and that we need to think right now about income without jobs (UBI and the like) is pure delirium. Society won't change so fast.
You need to ask yourself exactly why it's not happening. It's not because it isn't possible, or because humans are better at operating trains. There's simply a lot of opposition to such ideas, and a lot of entrenched interests with political power that keep machines at bay - for now.
well france has automated subways for years and they don't automate all only because of syndicates. i believe they will automate all when cost decrease
> I'm still waiting to see cashiers disappear in supermarkets. Or bakers, since bread and cake production could be completely automatized by now. Strangely they are not going away. I wonder why...
You must be (un)lucky to have avoided the wave of self-service checkout points :). As for bakers, I don't remember when was the last time I saw a bakery that acutally baked anything - the ones I see all have bread and cakes delivered several times a day by whoever owns the franchise.
Also, automation is not a binary proposition - if your central bakery uses big dough machines and industrial baking ovens, it already counts as half-automated, as it employs much less personnel per unit of output as bakeries used to few decades ago :).
I would also like to add that large scale bread production is already mostly automated. You will still have local bakeries because fresh bread is nice, and the automation needs large factory halls that are unlikely to be near your home or match your schedule.
Indeed, but the point is that man-made bread > industrial bread in the end. It's not because you can automate something that it create better goods in the end.
If that was the case we would replace cooks with robots for a long time as well.
And of course the list goes on for many, many other professions.
It's obvious that the ones who predict massive automation of most jobs are thinking WAY AHEAD of their life. It's not going to happen anytime soon, no matter how much software and hardware is "eating the world". Making predictions is always a risky business... after all we were all supposed to have flying cars by 2015 and whatever, yet the best piece of tech we have is just a tiny computer in our pockets - that's a great achievement, but it's a little short of the dreams we had 30 years ago.
It's also more expensive, and I am fine with industrial bread. I know many, many people who only buy their break from the supermarket and that is all industrialized. Bakeries still exist, but many less do than several years ago.
For automation to be a success it doesn't have to replace 100% of the market, and it's unlikely for it to ever truly reach 100% for the reasons you mention. But that's fine, it'll just slowly keep growing.
Then I hope you will also agree that "extinction" is too strong of a word, and we use it too often around here while in reality most jobs have a hard time disappearing completely, if at all.
On top of that, not sure about where you live, but some supermarkets also have reversed their trend about industrial bread and hire "baker-workers" who actually bake bread on-site (from industrial paste) instead of it being purely delivered for consumption, which is slightly better and fresher, and require human workers.
To be fair, I never did use the word extinction. I used deprecated and obsolete, which I stand by. Deprecated jobs may still exist because some people prefer it that way, they'll just become specialists. And they may also be obsolete for the primary market, but as we already discussed some people prefer a higher quality which these specialists might provide.
I'm from the Netherlands, and I haven't heard about the industrial paste thing. I don't think it happens, but maybe it does. In any case, if they do do that, there is no doubt in my mind that they need less workers to perform these tasks than to bake the bread from scratch. So that is still a win for automation.
I've seen that reversed trend, and it's the reason I go to bakeries - the bread in bakery shops is fresher and better even though they don't bake it on-site, but get it delivered from somewhere (I assume a big industrial bakery providing for the entire city) two-three times a day! The supermarket baked-on-site bread is much worse, and looks like a desperate attempt by supermarkets to keep people buying bread there.
Are they? Two local markets near me that bake bread on-site use the already employed staff. Putting dough into oven and setting a timer isn't much work, so usually the person behind the meat counter does that.
