Bite my shiny metal ass
September 13, 2015 9:50 PM Subscribe
People of the United Kingdom! Will a robot take your job? (previously for data from the USA)
Most at risk: Telephone Salesperson
Least at risk: Hotel and accommodation manager or owner
Most at risk: Telephone Salesperson
Least at risk: Hotel and accommodation manager or owner
Most at risk: worker. Least at risk: owner.
posted by Paragon at 10:21 PM on September 13, 2015 [25 favorites]
posted by Paragon at 10:21 PM on September 13, 2015 [25 favorites]
Robot, take my job - please!
posted by chavenet at 10:57 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 10:57 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
I"m happy to note that "ninja" didn't even get on the list, so I guess for now we don't have to worry about cyborg assassins with thermo-optic camouflage.
posted by happyroach at 12:28 AM on September 14, 2015
posted by happyroach at 12:28 AM on September 14, 2015
My job never makes these lists. I guess robots just aren't all that interested in internal communications. Probably easier if you're networked.
"Donut stand employee" seems to be a profession under threat, based on my encounter yesterday with the donut robot, but they still need a person to stand there and dunk the donuts in sugar when they come off the line. An automated sugar sprinkler would likely do terrible things to the employment rate in Britain's seaside towns.
posted by terretu at 1:16 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Donut stand employee" seems to be a profession under threat, based on my encounter yesterday with the donut robot, but they still need a person to stand there and dunk the donuts in sugar when they come off the line. An automated sugar sprinkler would likely do terrible things to the employment rate in Britain's seaside towns.
posted by terretu at 1:16 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
My job never makes these lists. I guess robots just aren't all that interested in internal communications.
Your job may be one result of having already fully or partially automated some jobs (gofer + secretary + typist + receptionist + editor + photographer + distributor + mail clerk + marketing + HR + middle manager + ??? + ...) such that someone is sitting home reading the want ads right now while you do your work and what would have been theirs.
So, no robot Basil Faulty then?
Your Fawlty is faulty. (Spell-checkers still need people to check spelling.)
Most at risk: worker. Least at risk: owner.
It's all down to who owns the (most) robots.
posted by pracowity at 1:35 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Your job may be one result of having already fully or partially automated some jobs (gofer + secretary + typist + receptionist + editor + photographer + distributor + mail clerk + marketing + HR + middle manager + ??? + ...) such that someone is sitting home reading the want ads right now while you do your work and what would have been theirs.
So, no robot Basil Faulty then?
Your Fawlty is faulty. (Spell-checkers still need people to check spelling.)
Most at risk: worker. Least at risk: owner.
It's all down to who owns the (most) robots.
posted by pracowity at 1:35 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
If I remember rightly expert systems were going to take my job in the eighties. We even had a consultant come in and interview a colleague as part of downloading his expertise. They were going to name the system "Howard" or whatever after this interviewee (nice touch).
I don't know what happened, but we never got the system. I think at one point they convinced themselves they didn't really need an expert system but could replace Howard with a diagram and some published instructions. Maybe they sacked him and replaced him with nothing.
posted by Segundus at 1:37 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't know what happened, but we never got the system. I think at one point they convinced themselves they didn't really need an expert system but could replace Howard with a diagram and some published instructions. Maybe they sacked him and replaced him with nothing.
posted by Segundus at 1:37 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
How is telephone salesman #1 to be replaced by robots? Don't we all simply hang up as soon as we hear the robots? Seems like a shortsighted business model.
posted by oceanjesse at 2:35 AM on September 14, 2015
posted by oceanjesse at 2:35 AM on September 14, 2015
I will fight those robot opera singers I will fight them so hard
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:43 AM on September 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:43 AM on September 14, 2015 [5 favorites]
Translators have been lumped in with authors and writers, and hence put at "not very likely", which given the interest and advances in machine translation seems a bit optimistic. Personally I've been a robot for some years now.
posted by runincircles at 2:55 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by runincircles at 2:55 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Don't we all simply hang up as soon as we hear the robots?
You hang up on the robots you think are robots and the owners replace them. You keep talking to the other robots and the owners get more of them. They evolve.
posted by pracowity at 3:05 AM on September 14, 2015
You hang up on the robots you think are robots and the owners replace them. You keep talking to the other robots and the owners get more of them. They evolve.
posted by pracowity at 3:05 AM on September 14, 2015
hahaha robots arse vs arse fawltty hahaha captialism hahaha mass unemployment destruction of democracy civil unrest and further immiseration of the populace look hahahah blinking lights hahaha serfdom
posted by lalochezia at 4:18 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by lalochezia at 4:18 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
No results for "robotologist" or "canary squelcher".
posted by blue_beetle at 4:22 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 4:22 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Retail cashiers and check-out operators: It's quite likely (90%)
A Preliminary Phenomenology of the Self-Checkout beautifully captures the estrangement of check-out operators:
A Preliminary Phenomenology of the Self-Checkout beautifully captures the estrangement of check-out operators:
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 5:02 AM on September 14, 2015 [4 favorites]LOCKE: What are these automated checkout machines even like? They must present an altogether innovative new approach to the logistics of buying and selling groceries.
MARX: Not at all. Replacing the equipment that was in place for manned checkout service with the self-checkout machine does not entail a fundamental re-engineering of the activity. Almost all differences are in fact cosmetic: a snappy GUI, the touchscreen instead of a keyboard, an audible narrator voice in lieu of onscreen prompts. In this case, we are allowing consumers to perform the exact same job the laborers once did. The position of the grocery store checkout clerk is primed to suffer a fate worse than obsolescence. And so—just like the worker who used to pump gas and process the payment before it was arranged so that the consumer would perform both these tasks himself, and like the worker who used to dispense frozen yogurt and adorn it with toppings before the yogurt boutiques emerged and reassigned those duties as tasks for the consumer—soon too will the ex-grocery cashier not be merely obsolete, but doubly estranged. He did not stomach the elimination of his job from the production line. He can not lament that his position was eradicated by a fully automated solution. Instead, he must watch the activity of his work be undertaken by the customers he once served. It is like outsourcing, but with more cruelty. For in this disturbing case, the new class of willing workers are doing your old job for no wage, not just a lower one. They’re not strangers in India or Bangladesh—they’re your neighbors, relatives, and friends, and they’re banded together as a collective of consumer-laborers to painlessly, and without complaint, take up the cross you suffered beneath for years, all while insisting that they wish you quite well. The doubly estranged laborer is invalidated, emasculated, expatriated, and defamed. He is deposed by his satirists, who reign in silence.
Apparently, "queen" is so secure from automation it didn't warrant inclusion on the list.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:04 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:04 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
No, she's already a robot, so it's irrelevant.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:22 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by blue_beetle at 5:22 AM on September 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm happy to note that "ninja" didn't even get on the list
That's how good the robot ninjas are!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:25 AM on September 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
That's how good the robot ninjas are!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:25 AM on September 14, 2015 [6 favorites]
Don't we all simply hang up as soon as we hear the robots?
You get other robots to talk to them. And then we all take jobs installing more fiber optic cables so the robots can talk to each other about timeshares and duct cleaning services.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:11 AM on September 14, 2015
You get other robots to talk to them. And then we all take jobs installing more fiber optic cables so the robots can talk to each other about timeshares and duct cleaning services.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:11 AM on September 14, 2015
In a sane society automation would be an unmitigated good. "Oh, hey, no one has to do this unpleasant/monotonous thing anymore!" But because western society desperately clings to the idea that one has to have "a job" to justify their own existence, automation ruins lives instead.
Far past time to take the productivity gains of networking and automation and pass them along to displaced workers via a basic income plan.
posted by mellow seas at 8:21 AM on September 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Far past time to take the productivity gains of networking and automation and pass them along to displaced workers via a basic income plan.
posted by mellow seas at 8:21 AM on September 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
A "basic income plan" as in a living income, in place of unemployment benefits? As if that's likely to happen, every development of economic trends and policies worldwide is currently pointing in that very direction, yeah?
posted by bitteschoen at 8:52 AM on September 14, 2015
posted by bitteschoen at 8:52 AM on September 14, 2015
52% is better than I expected, so I have that going for me.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:13 AM on September 14, 2015
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:13 AM on September 14, 2015
Don't we all simply hang up as soon as we hear the robots?
Robot stares dejectedly at the phone for a moment, sighs, reaches for his hat and coat. A bad week. No, a bad month. The commute home is awash with rain, other robots crammed into the carriage, standing room only. When he gets home and opens the door his little robot children race against him smiling and wrap themselves around his legs. He tousles their hair, picks the littlest one up and carries her through to the kitchen where his wife is making dinner. He sits at the table and talks with his daughter for a while until she drops to the floor and runs off laughing into the other room with her brothers. His fingers play with the cutlery already laid out for the meal, looks at his wife and beings to weep.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:13 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Robot stares dejectedly at the phone for a moment, sighs, reaches for his hat and coat. A bad week. No, a bad month. The commute home is awash with rain, other robots crammed into the carriage, standing room only. When he gets home and opens the door his little robot children race against him smiling and wrap themselves around his legs. He tousles their hair, picks the littlest one up and carries her through to the kitchen where his wife is making dinner. He sits at the table and talks with his daughter for a while until she drops to the floor and runs off laughing into the other room with her brothers. His fingers play with the cutlery already laid out for the meal, looks at his wife and beings to weep.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:13 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Robot knows he'll be replaced soon. He can't handle another stint of unemployment. He fumbles in his pocket at the paper pressed into his hand, surreptitiously, on the train. It says 'Robots Must Unionize!' on one side and 'Solidarity!' on the other.
He breathes a heavy sigh.
posted by eclectist at 9:23 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
He breathes a heavy sigh.
posted by eclectist at 9:23 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Who/what will replace the robots?
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 10:42 AM on September 14, 2015
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 10:42 AM on September 14, 2015
I don't really trust this as it lumps too many fields together. For example, it says that journalist jobs are highly unlikely to be automated. The problem is that it's already happened.
posted by I-baLL at 12:26 PM on September 14, 2015
posted by I-baLL at 12:26 PM on September 14, 2015
A "basic income plan" as in a living income, in place of unemployment benefits? As if that's likely to happen, every development of economic trends and policies worldwide is currently pointing in that very direction, yeah?
(1) Just because something is unlikely it isn't necessarily wrong.
(2) Trends change fast.
(3) You seem sad. I suggest cake.
posted by howfar at 4:22 PM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
(1) Just because something is unlikely it isn't necessarily wrong.
(2) Trends change fast.
(3) You seem sad. I suggest cake.
posted by howfar at 4:22 PM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Who/what will replace the robots?
Engineered animals:
Rows of beings
Part animal and
Part machine
Welded together
As one great beast
That works all day
To eat our waste
posted by pracowity at 2:23 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Engineered animals:
Rows of beings
Part animal and
Part machine
Welded together
As one great beast
That works all day
To eat our waste
posted by pracowity at 2:23 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
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Surely that should be "arse"?
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:00 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]