You are living in the past, McDonalds have already opened their first FULLY AUTOMATED store in the USA recently. AI and automation are about to make many people redundant.
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Would anyone like a sensible discussion about low pay?
- Thread starter UKSBD
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You are living in the past, McDonalds have already opened their first FULLY AUTOMATED store in the USA recently. AI and automation are about to make many people redundant.
Will be customer services next, call centres replaced by chat bots. Already happening at a rapid pace.
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T
The Byre
@hg5guy - I've heard all this before. I fact I have been hearing that progress and automation will mean the end of work as we know it for decades. No doubt, similar nonsense lead to the Luddite riots in 1811.
AI is not going to replace any workplaces - but it certainly will change many workplaces. Just as steam-driven weaving looms replaced hand looms and tractors replaced horses, so AI will replace boring and repetitive office tasks and free staff up to become more creative thereby more productive.
Work changes and the very nature of work changes. Television did not replace the cinema and there are more films being made today than at any time in history. Tractors did not replace the horse and there are more horses today in the UK than back before the agricultural revolution.
We are in this mess not because of too much automation or global this that or the other, but because governments almost everywhere are in the hands of the dogmatic and the incompetent. That is our fault. We are stupid enough to allow total idiots to run this and most other countries and run the systems within them.
Not just the politicians - the civil servants, the central bankers, these people defend their desks and their wasteful ways. We allowed them to drop the gold standard because we didn't care and we were not paying attention. We allowed them to print money and deliberately create inflation instead of cutting government spending because we didn't care enough and we were not paying attention.
The government does not have to do everything - that is just (1) absurd and (2) wasteful.
The government does not have to care for the elderly or run the health systems. Elsewhere, social insurance run by friendly societies and charities do those tasks better and cheaper than bureaucrats.
But fret not! It's coming to an end soon!
The OBR’s latest forecast is for net debt to reach £2,571bn by March 2023 and to approach £3tn by March 2028. November’s £22bn deficit was £14bn higher than the £8bn deficit reported for November last year and was £8bn more than the previous month (October 2022).
The OBR revised its forecast last month with the Autumn Statement and now estimates that the deficit will reach £177bn for 2022/23.
A debt event horizon looms over this ship of fools. All that fresh borrowing is now index-linked. The more they borrow fresh money into existence, the higher the inflation. The higher the inflation, the larger the deficit, so the more they borrow.
Enjoy the spectacle of the lasting depression - it will bring with it great opportunities for businesses that are quick to react and are prepared for what is to come!
AI is not going to replace any workplaces - but it certainly will change many workplaces. Just as steam-driven weaving looms replaced hand looms and tractors replaced horses, so AI will replace boring and repetitive office tasks and free staff up to become more creative thereby more productive.
Work changes and the very nature of work changes. Television did not replace the cinema and there are more films being made today than at any time in history. Tractors did not replace the horse and there are more horses today in the UK than back before the agricultural revolution.
We are in this mess not because of too much automation or global this that or the other, but because governments almost everywhere are in the hands of the dogmatic and the incompetent. That is our fault. We are stupid enough to allow total idiots to run this and most other countries and run the systems within them.
Not just the politicians - the civil servants, the central bankers, these people defend their desks and their wasteful ways. We allowed them to drop the gold standard because we didn't care and we were not paying attention. We allowed them to print money and deliberately create inflation instead of cutting government spending because we didn't care enough and we were not paying attention.
The government does not have to do everything - that is just (1) absurd and (2) wasteful.
The government does not have to care for the elderly or run the health systems. Elsewhere, social insurance run by friendly societies and charities do those tasks better and cheaper than bureaucrats.
But fret not! It's coming to an end soon!
The OBR’s latest forecast is for net debt to reach £2,571bn by March 2023 and to approach £3tn by March 2028. November’s £22bn deficit was £14bn higher than the £8bn deficit reported for November last year and was £8bn more than the previous month (October 2022).
The OBR revised its forecast last month with the Autumn Statement and now estimates that the deficit will reach £177bn for 2022/23.
A debt event horizon looms over this ship of fools. All that fresh borrowing is now index-linked. The more they borrow fresh money into existence, the higher the inflation. The higher the inflation, the larger the deficit, so the more they borrow.
Enjoy the spectacle of the lasting depression - it will bring with it great opportunities for businesses that are quick to react and are prepared for what is to come!
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- Original Poster
- #164
I think it should be a bit of both
The employer should pay enough that a single person can live comfortably
A couple both working can live nicely
A couple with children, 1 working full time one part time can live nicely
A couple with children, 1 working full time one not working can live comfortably
Is it possible that the same pay rate covers all 4 scenarios though?
What I disagree with is using extremes to determine pay rates, extremes should fall on the state
IE.
If the pay rate the employer pays is high enough that a couple with children, working 53.5 hours a week between them can live nicely, it shouldn't be down to the employer to top up the wages when a couple with children, working 37.5 hours a week are struggling, that should be down to the state.
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We need support to protect us from local government too. Having dealt with many councils over the years it's frightening how inept they are, I have sat in meetings and been dumfounded at how stupid they can be. If everyone had to go to at least one council meeting before being able to vote things maybe very different
Its going off the topic somewhat, but at the end of the day its the tax payers who are going to be bailing these fools out.
If you have not picked up on the story yet worth a read about Thurrock Council and how they are looking after local interests
Thurrock Council issues S114 notice of financial distress
Thurrock Council is ceasing spending on all but essential services due to its £469m debt.
www.bbc.co.uk
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I can't wait for my local to get "fully automated" then I might at least get the right burgers and drinks when going using the drive through
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I have been experimenting with ChatGPT, a newly released AI, supposedly as good as an average Uni student atm, they reckon within two years it will be better than a professor level.
I have been told some people are using it already in work, it is scarily quick, and already pretty good. I’m sure there will be many other versions coming along, if people believe things have changed a great deal since the internet came into use, as the song goes, baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Everyone will need to be very adaptable to stay anywhere near to being competitive IMO.
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You're not wrong, I'm a local planning agent with various councils in kent, I get invited to meetings about planning and stuff like that. The ineptitude is staggering, I believe born out of being totally unrelated to the important issues of, time and money. In the world of a civil servant, time and money don't seem to exist.
I don't go anymore, far too frustrating and I ain't the quiet type, was getting myself a reputation!
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When you say "down to the state", what you mean is, down to the people who pay taxes.
That being the case, why don't those people simply support them by paying higher prices that would allow the companies to pay them a proper wage? A couple with children are hardly an extreme. If the couple cannot make ends meet by both working, perhaps they shouldn't have had children and expect other people to support them.
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T
The Byre
I once sat in a meeting where some prat droned on for 45 minutes about which software to use for a brochure. In the end, I just walked out, saying "I just do not have time in my life for this nonsense!"
I am in a never-ending battle with some department within the German government that seems to think that it's just peachy to drag out a vital decision for about two years - and counting! The department is called the Bundesverwaltungsamt -
in English The Ministry for Administrative Affairs.
And it has several thousand civil servants, feather-bedded pension, early retirement and a 35-hour week!
Ask it to create and it fails. What is new is that they can come up with new ideas for things like stories -so yes, they are on their way! ChatGPT is particularly impressive!
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I'm not sure how or where you got the impression that I was negative about AI / automation / machine learning, I think its a wonderful thing.
My point was that the huge labour shortage that another poster seems to think is on the horizon as a result of a demographic crisis will be mitigated somewhat by automation increasing our productivity and freeing up resources to other areas, including those that are currently short of resource.
I work for a major bank and my job is to automate processes by the way, we've reduced headcount by 15% as a direct result of that automation, our current project is optimising and rolling out an incredibly advanced chatbot which convinces about 75% of people that they are conversing with a human, with that percentage increasing by the week. This isn't science fiction, it is real, and its a wonderful thing.
Contrary to what you claim that it definitely will replace workforces. in the business I work for it has replaced entire teams. I didn't read much of your post as it became evident quite early on that you didn't take the time to read mine properly. E.g. when you say:
"We are in this mess not because of too much automation"
Why are you you directing this to me, somebody who has literally just saying that automation will help get us OUT of the mess. You've dedicated a lot of words to preaching to the choir.
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How will autolmation get us out of the mess of poorer people freezing or starving to death?
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The UK has seen slow rates of real wage growth for the past 15 years because productivity growth has been poor relative to other countries. That simple.
Automation can help to increase our productivity.
Here's a decent (and short enough) read if you want to understand this correlation:
Why is UK Productivity Low and How Can It Improve? - NIESR
What are the reasons behind the UK's low productivity? Are the measures announced during the 'mini-budget' sufficient to address the systemic challenges?
www.niesr.ac.uk
Here's a quote from that piece:
"The UK’s real wages improved with the country’s productivity before 2008 and stagnated as productivity grew at a much slower pace in the post-2008 period"
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Yes, but automation will increase company productivity but it will put a lot of people out of work. So it benefits those with money and penalises those without.The UK has seen slow rates of real wage growth for the past 15 years because productivity growth has been poor relative to other countries. That simple.
Automation can help to increase our productivity.
Here's a decent (and short enough) read if you want to understand this correlation:
Why is UK Productivity Low and How Can It Improve? - NIESR
What are the reasons behind the UK's low productivity? Are the measures announced during the 'mini-budget' sufficient to address the systemic challenges?
Here's a quote from that piece:
"The UK’s real wages improved with the country’s productivity before 2008 and stagnated as productivity grew at a much slower pace in the post-2008 period"
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But that is just the human version of survival of the fittest, applicable to every species of animal on the planet.
We are no different, in fact we are a whole load worse!
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No, it will free up resource to meet the demands of other sectors which can't achieve their full production potential because they can't fill positions / find talent.
In November 2022 (the last published month). There were 1.22 million job vacancies. During a recession. When in your lifetime can you remember there being 1.22 million job vacancies during a recession?
It doesn't take much imagination to see how freeing up human resource can result in a large boost in productivity. I'm not going to go round and round in circles on this, but if you can't see how hundreds of thousands losing their jobs carrying goods and people by barge around the canal system to be replaced by steam trains resulted in a great era of prosperity then I can't convince you that unshackling hundreds of thousands of people from call centre jobs dealing with Karen's who are kicking off because their delivery is 1 day late will help to ensure that these people are encouraged into the roles (much needed) which are going to boost GDP, manufacturing desperate for people to meet demand (domestic and overseas/external).
Its is basic economics that increased productivity = increased prosperity, and basic common sense that some jobs are less economically productive than others.
Automation has been happening for years, I've been automating processes for a decade. Yet record number of vacancies in the UK. Why would that be happening if, as you say, it will "put a lot of people out of work". It will require some people to change what work they do, absolutely, but there is frankly no shortage of work.
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Have you?
Increased productivity = increased real terms wages.
Further automation = productivity boost.
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Automation and AI will put many people out of work, but new industries yet not thought of will appear. Scary as it seems atm, you cannot hold back the tide. Any company not considering using the technology will probably not get the chance to discuss it for too long.
Even huge companies will have to learn to adapt faster than smaller companies, or they will not remain the leaders for long.
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A result of the double edged sword, that people working full time during the week do their shopping in the evening and at weekends.
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I'm not living in the past, I'm fully present and aware of how things are going. I said an increase in minimum wage and technology. As the technology increases, it becomes cheaper. As people get more expensive and technology less so, the cut off point is reached and the switch begins.
If I were living in the past, it would all have happened by now.
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He's right. Doesn't matter how little humans earn, they will still procreate.
To take your statement to it's logical conclusion would require the sterotypical dystopian future portrayed in films where only the richest have privileges such as breeding whilst the rest are grown in a lab and killed off as soon as their useful working lifespan has expired.
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Oh, I replied to your comment about it would not take that long before McDonalds would only require a single employee due to technology, I pointed out they had already done that, in the recent past.
Not looking to argue, just replying to your post.
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Ironically the opposite of what we have now, where the economically active / rich breed prudently at a lower rate than the economically inactive, who can do so precisely because the rich fund the housing and medication to harvest an ever-increasing population of them.
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T
The Byre
Excellent!
I apologise if I gave that impression - only the first paragraph was directed at you. I should have made that clear.
As for productivity - the UK has been falling behind and several pundits have been worrying and wondering why.
I am fairly certain that the relatively poor performance of the UK economy since the GFC is directly to do with poor government, poor health, a service sector that is too large and poor education.
The UK is just not structured for growth and high productivity. There is too much government - 47% of GDP is waaaay too high and as I mentioned earlier, government debt is beginning to accelerate out of control - what I call a debt event horizon.
It is no coincidence that the sudden slowing down almost to a stop for growth happened as soon as Osborne got his feet under the big desk with all the pencils. Austerity by salami-slicing hits the austerity anomaly with an almighty bang. Since then, we have seen the most irresponsible rush to expand the money supply in history.
The NHS is incorrectly structured, both organisationally and financially. People's general health and their eating habits add to the poor state of the nation's health. Reforms of both the NHS and the food laws are urgently needed.
As for education, the UK does not need one more educated idiot that has wasted their and public money studying philosophy, PPE, history, the classics or any of these other useless disciplines. By all means study those subjects if that is what you want - but not on my dime! We need engineers, mathematicians, IT techs and above all, we need more hands-on trades and need a proper apprenticeship and master trades structure.
Above all, we do not need any more services. That is a low-wage, low-productivity sector that should be discouraged. The UK needs exports and not coffee shops and cakes delivered to the home.
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Totally agree with this. I have long argued Universities etc should be used more sensibly for training in courses employers are looking for skills in, not offering degrees in the Spice Girls general knowledge or similar useless information.
As for low productivity, generally I think this is due to allowing too much cheap labour into the country. Companies were encouraged to use manual labour in many areas where investing into automated plant etc would have paid huge long term dividends.
The days when the UK had any sort of plan seem to have disappeared a couple of decades ago. Traditional trades, such as builders, electricians etc were actively discouraged from being considered by my old career teachers, basically I was encouraged into clean office work, not getting dirty.
Luckily I tend not to listen.
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Actually going the other way recently (i work in the sector). companies are realising that speaking to a local sounding call centre is a winner with customers (local to as much as a particular regional UK accent)
I expect the trend will be initial AI or "choose 1 for bill payments" followed by transfer to a human who will have better info at their fingertips to answer your issue (and hopefully be empowered to actually do something about it)
Plenty of places now with wfh call centres or smaller local hubs rather than a single big one. The tech allows it, the customers like it and it is often cheaper (as easier to hire staff if the location is "anywhere")
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They are discouraged by the funding models for colleges/6th forms and the fact that schools are "ranked" on outcomes that prioritise as large a % as possible being funnelled into university.
Education should not be a "marketplace" other than in maybe tertiary institutions competing to be given certain specialities or research grants and that should be decided on recent past success/industry links not who can write the prettiest prospectus/funding application.
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Interesting topic on AI, and interesting contributions from hg5guy who appears to be working on the front line of this - thanks.
My view is any change will be disruptive in the short term but beneficial in the long run. We can't stop technological progress just so someone retains a job sweeping a floor or taking an order at a McD's drive-thru when a robot or AI (or both) can handle the same function. Isn't freeing people from drudgery supposed to be an aim of a developed society? We used to plant crops by hand. And one day people in the future may also look back and say "they actually used to hand out bags of food at drive-thrus with people". Or disbelieving they're used to be 1000 people packed into a building answering calls for a single company.
Humans won't be redundant but will have to be redeployed. Clearly some humans will be around even in very highly automated set-ups. I imagine even for a "fully" automated McDs well into the future (suspect they're working on the kitchen staff too) they'd have 2-3 staff on site, opening up/closing up, performing the role of security, maintenance of equipment, trouble-shooting, dealing with issues for customers when computer says no etc. These jobs probably will be high paying too as be skilled to be able to do all of that. So replace 20 relatively low paid jobs with a few higher paid ones.
My view is any change will be disruptive in the short term but beneficial in the long run. We can't stop technological progress just so someone retains a job sweeping a floor or taking an order at a McD's drive-thru when a robot or AI (or both) can handle the same function. Isn't freeing people from drudgery supposed to be an aim of a developed society? We used to plant crops by hand. And one day people in the future may also look back and say "they actually used to hand out bags of food at drive-thrus with people". Or disbelieving they're used to be 1000 people packed into a building answering calls for a single company.
Humans won't be redundant but will have to be redeployed. Clearly some humans will be around even in very highly automated set-ups. I imagine even for a "fully" automated McDs well into the future (suspect they're working on the kitchen staff too) they'd have 2-3 staff on site, opening up/closing up, performing the role of security, maintenance of equipment, trouble-shooting, dealing with issues for customers when computer says no etc. These jobs probably will be high paying too as be skilled to be able to do all of that. So replace 20 relatively low paid jobs with a few higher paid ones.
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- Original Poster
- #198
Increased productivity is great if it is done by a UK based company who is taxed adequately in the UK and keeps all the profits in the UK.
Increased productivity isn't so good if it is done my a foreign based company, profits aren't taxed in the UK and all money is filtered out to another country.
Increased productivity isn't so good if it is done my a foreign based company, profits aren't taxed in the UK and all money is filtered out to another country.
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The current and future beneficiaries of AI and technological development are the IT experts.
A Digger doing the work of 10 men with spades replaced with one IT expert doing the work of 1000 checkout operators.
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Agreed, however, the reason they have made 17 hour per week contracts which now have to cover weekends and evenings till 9pm is because they've stopped paying a higher rate for people to work weekends and evenings (as they used to as unsociable hours contracts). People who could do the night/weekend work found other work to do at higher rates.
They are also often short term 3 to 6 month contracts, which allows the supermarket to change the hours and days as they please - which is difficult for working mum/single dads etc.
Because of that none of those contracts can be taken by single parents or Mums looking to get a bit of extra cash into the household whilst the kids are at school. If they do decide to try it and the supermarket change the contract 3 months later to hours they can't do, the Universal Credit people make it really difficult for them to get through to them to adjust their UC.
Instead of reviewing their policies the supermarkets have just advised their current staff that they would be changing work hours and issued new contracts which included evenings and weekends.
They're always understaffed and expect the workforce to suck-up under staffing/sick leave with poorly paid overtime (usually for nights and weekends) and if you don't 'help them' you are often then given terrible hours when your contract renews 3 months later and you are someway to understanding why no one wants to work for them.
Additionally, they hire extra staff for Christmas just weeks (sometimes days) before they need them with very little training (particularly on tills) and you have the answer why stores like Marks and Spencer are always in chaos at Christmas with long queues. Those are 3 month contracts which are not renewed after Christmas and the risk is that anyone on UC that takes them will have trouble getting their UC worked out once it ends without being out of pocket - what's the point!
No one wants to top up Universal Credit working in such conditions at a risk of being out of pocket later.
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