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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2884 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.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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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

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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