<story><title>Google Acquires Seven Robot Companies, Wants Big Role in Robotics</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/google-acquisition-seven-robotics-companies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wohlf</author><text>From my roots in a Michigan automotive city, the first thing this makes me think about is the massive amount of jobs this will eliminate if successful. We will need drastic changes in social policy to make up for it, and I have absolutely no faith in the government and voters to make it happen. I find the idea of replacing millions of labor and service jobs with cheap robotics before the world is ready to accept the consequences terrifying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jpatokal</author><text>If a job is so simple, repetitive and brainless that it can be automated, it&amp;#x27;s in humanity&amp;#x27;s best interest that it gets automated, and people are freed to do something more useful.  Yes, this will suck if you&amp;#x27;re 50 years old and get laid off the assembly line, but we&amp;#x27;ve been automating jobs out of existence for a few centuries now and the overall consequences have not been particularly terrifying.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Acquires Seven Robot Companies, Wants Big Role in Robotics</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/google-acquisition-seven-robotics-companies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wohlf</author><text>From my roots in a Michigan automotive city, the first thing this makes me think about is the massive amount of jobs this will eliminate if successful. We will need drastic changes in social policy to make up for it, and I have absolutely no faith in the government and voters to make it happen. I find the idea of replacing millions of labor and service jobs with cheap robotics before the world is ready to accept the consequences terrifying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pedalpete</author><text>If you look at the history, I believe you&amp;#x27;ll see that automation of any sort has resulted in the movement of jobs, not a lack of jobs.&lt;p&gt;Think back to the Horse &amp;amp; Buggy days, when cars came along, I&amp;#x27;m sure people were saying &amp;quot;with all these cars not needing horses, all those people that care for and breed horses will be out of work&amp;quot;, but look at all the jobs that were created, and particularly the jobs you&amp;#x27;re now concerned have been lost in Detroit.&lt;p&gt;I think Detroit may be a bit of a special case as the population boom there was driven by the growth of the Automotive industry at a time when everything needed to be centralised. Almost everything was decentralised before (with the majority of jobs being in Agriculture I believe), so we had a short period of history with mass centralisation and we are now able to decentralise again, so the places that amassed workers geographically look so much worse off by comparison, while going through massive change.&lt;p&gt;Unemployment may be high now (tough to get a good number showing the difference over the last century, but at least one of the brilliant people on HN knows how to do it), but I suspect that if you exclude the last 5 years, unemployment was fairly flat as a percentage over the last century.</text></comment>