Machines might not take your job. But they could make it worse (economist.com)
I watched a show once talking about consultants looking for ways to replace computer automation with more effective simpler means. Because it can be automated does not mean it should be. A rather simple example is the heating controls on my older car vs. the newer one. The older is basically constant heat output, while the newer one strives to achieve constant temperature. There are times when I appreciate the older controls, and very seldom that I appreciate the newer constant temperature control.
The same is true about the accelerator pedal feeding into a computer as opposed to directly (mechanically) controlling the injection system. I now need to try and figure out what the computer algorithm is doing which is frustrating.
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Out of curiosity mostly, I once visited a burger place that boasted a burger-flipping robot because I heard about it on the news a few months prior. The machine did indeed cook the burgers and the fries, but it needed humans to place the ingredients neatly into an input chamber, take the cooked food out, and assemble the actual meal. The robot clearly wasn’t capable of prepping the other ingredients like lettuce and tomatoes, and it took up more space than a human cook would, causing the workers to idle because they could not move freely and multitask. As far as I could look up, affordably automating fine motor control is still outside this robot’s capabilities. It just goes to show that the talk about replacing workers around this robot was premature and greedy, and the same pattern of “yes it’s automated, but…” is very common now.
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didn’t like products that promised to do everything at the touch of a button
Promises are cheap, everyone who is selling something makes a ton of them. Consumers learn that products that promise everything often do not deliver, so it is rational to be wary of them.
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I’m guessing that’s exactly why they installed the robot. They knew that it was not going to be more efficient or cheaper than a human. But they were betting that it would get them on the news and attract new customers.
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This phenomenon has been known for a long time.
There’s a passage in one of Feynman’s popular books which discusses the braking of the space shuttle. The astronauts were opposed to automating the braking, because they felt it was their job, and they were good at it.
However, the automated algorithm resulted in much less wear on the brake pads, which equated to weight savings, so in the end NASA went with automated braking anyway.
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This rings true for me, as a former restaurant line cook. It’s not about pride in my skills–I’m happy to use a kitchen gadget if it actually does something faster/better/more consistently than I can by hand. But a lot of those one-button automatic functions are more about appearing on the side of the box as a marketing device, rather than making better food. Pressing the “Sensor Cook: Meat” button on the microwave will cook you a steak, but will not produce a better result than doing it in a pan where you can look, smell, and touch to see when it’s done.
Some relevant quotes from a study on AI-enhanced work that happened to come across my feed this morning:
- Leaders have high hopes that generative AI will help boost productivity, as 96% of C-suite leaders say they expect the use of AI tools to increase their company’s overall productivity levels. Already, 39% of companies in our study are mandating the use of AI tools, with an additional 46% encouraging their use.
- However, this new technology has not yet fully delivered on this productivity promise: Nearly half (47%) of employees using AI say they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect, and 77% say these tools have actually decreased their productivity and added to their workload.
In other words, restaurant owners have bought an expensive new sensor-cook microwave based on the promises on the box, but the actual cooks are finding they need to keep pressing the “+30 seconds” button when the automatic function finishes and the meat is still raw…
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There are two very different aspects to it: What consumers would prefer, and what the businesses would use.
As a consumer (which is what the OP was about) you might prefer to cut vegetables by a hand-forged knife, or even forge your knife yourself just for the fun of it. As a hobby programmer you might write everything in C or even assembler.
But as a business owner you would replace your personal by a machine as soon as there is a clear economical advantage for that. That relates both to whose in the kitchen and at computer.
Right now AI is overhyped, but you see the progress of the last years.
Some of these tools may eventually boost productivity, but figuring out which will take time. In the meantime, almost anything can be sold if you tag “AI” on it, firms are always looking for opportunities to cut labor costs.
The incentives within most firms are not well aligned with objectively evaluating these either — the managers who initiated the purchase of an expensive tool will not be in a good position if it turns out to be a net loss, so they do everything within their power to hide that information (at least until they move in to a different company).
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