<story><title>What did the tech CEO say to the worker he wanted to automate?</title><url>http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/what-did-tech-ceo-say-worker-he-wanted-automate#.Uh6EtAC_2Bw.facebook</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnordfnordfnord</author><text>Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do:&lt;p&gt;1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?)&lt;p&gt;2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous)&lt;p&gt;3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven&amp;#x27;t saved a fortune and can&amp;#x27;t cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we&amp;#x27;ve been doing it)</text></item><item><author>shubb</author><text>The thesis of the audio clip appears to be that an unsolved problem with automation is what becomes of the automated workers.&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend works in a government job, at a regulator.&lt;p&gt;Most jobs there exist because they insist in dealing with paper forms instead of internet ones - for most employees, half the work is in correcting invalid forms (e.g. no contact address).&lt;p&gt;The other half is in applying rules that they have to know because they have never been codified in a database (instead living in large regulation documents).&lt;p&gt;Recently, they have been downsizing. One of the employees that was fired was primarily responsible for sorting emails that arrive in a centralized inbox, allocating them equally to staff. She also ordered stationary, and watered plants. When she left, she was entirely replaced by 2 Outlook rules, one to allocate the mail, the other to periodically order stationary by automated mail.&lt;p&gt;I wonder what will become of that lady. She had a fear of technology, not even mastering how to send email though it was her primary role for 5 years. She regularly cried in the office, and when asked to do anything outside that small role, approached a nervous breakdown.&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of people who are not able to cope with advanced roles, by which I mean normal jobs a normal person could perform. Either we are willing to pay for them to be comfortably unemployed (as the CEO implies we should be), or we are not. I suspect we are not. So they will be punished, and made to feel terrible, until they are diagnosed with something and can be disabled. At this point, their livelyhood relies on not being able, and this seeps into the soul.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>omgsean</author><text>Optional number 4: Turn them into resources in the for-profit criminal justice system when they eventually turn to using and selling addictive drugs.</text></comment>
<story><title>What did the tech CEO say to the worker he wanted to automate?</title><url>http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/what-did-tech-ceo-say-worker-he-wanted-automate#.Uh6EtAC_2Bw.facebook</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnordfnordfnord</author><text>Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do:&lt;p&gt;1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?)&lt;p&gt;2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous)&lt;p&gt;3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven&amp;#x27;t saved a fortune and can&amp;#x27;t cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we&amp;#x27;ve been doing it)</text></item><item><author>shubb</author><text>The thesis of the audio clip appears to be that an unsolved problem with automation is what becomes of the automated workers.&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend works in a government job, at a regulator.&lt;p&gt;Most jobs there exist because they insist in dealing with paper forms instead of internet ones - for most employees, half the work is in correcting invalid forms (e.g. no contact address).&lt;p&gt;The other half is in applying rules that they have to know because they have never been codified in a database (instead living in large regulation documents).&lt;p&gt;Recently, they have been downsizing. One of the employees that was fired was primarily responsible for sorting emails that arrive in a centralized inbox, allocating them equally to staff. She also ordered stationary, and watered plants. When she left, she was entirely replaced by 2 Outlook rules, one to allocate the mail, the other to periodically order stationary by automated mail.&lt;p&gt;I wonder what will become of that lady. She had a fear of technology, not even mastering how to send email though it was her primary role for 5 years. She regularly cried in the office, and when asked to do anything outside that small role, approached a nervous breakdown.&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of people who are not able to cope with advanced roles, by which I mean normal jobs a normal person could perform. Either we are willing to pay for them to be comfortably unemployed (as the CEO implies we should be), or we are not. I suspect we are not. So they will be punished, and made to feel terrible, until they are diagnosed with something and can be disabled. At this point, their livelyhood relies on not being able, and this seeps into the soul.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drivingmenuts</author><text>#1 won&amp;#x27;t happen - there&amp;#x27;s too many people who want to toss unproductive people aside like so much dead wood. Unproductive people cost money and there&amp;#x27;s a whole school of thought in the US that really, really (and I do mean really) resents that.&lt;p&gt;#3 is already being done and it&amp;#x27;s working as intended (not that it is a good thing by any means), although it seems to be inefficient as far as that first group of thinkers is concerned.</text></comment>