the domain is interesting, but I worry about the long-term effects of maximizing efficiencies (read: automation) forpeople who rely on jobs in that industry.
The whole debate on if automation is a good thing or not has always been pointless to me.
It's like trying to un-discover nuclear weapons, once it's out there you can't go back. Things are going to get more efficient, more automated, and those jobs will be lost. It's not a matter of "if", but "when".
What we need to do is to figure out ways to cope with the change. Find tasks that these workers can do that allows them to earn a living, experiment with universal income to maybe one day not need everyone to work, fund education programs so these people can learn to do something different, provide some safety nets so that these people have time to cope with the changes.
We need to adapt as society, not pretend that this technology doesn't exist.
> What we need to do is to figure out ways to cope with the change. Find tasks that these workers can do that allows them to earn a living, experiment with universal income to maybe one day not need everyone to work, fund education programs so these people can learn to do something different, provide some safety nets so that these people have time to cope with the changes
A myth about manufacturing jobs is that they all went overseas. Reality is that most of them were replaced by robots and automation.
Low skill, low knowledge, repetitive work is key target for automation.
Fast food workers wouldn't have large downstream effects. Automated truck driving would though. There are likely entire towns right off of highways that depend on humans passing through daily - restaurants, repair shops, etc. If automated trucks don't stop anymore, a town could literally be a ghost town.
Hey this is Brian -- I wrote the article. I do want to add that Chick-fil-A isnt looking to replace jobs with "robots". We really want to assign our restaurant team members to tasks that add maximum value to customers, which are generally service oriented (iPad in Drive Thru, personal service in the dining room, etc). Our automation will help our team members be more effecient and enjoy their jobs more rather than replace them.
Of all places I doubt CFA would replace workers, having nice, helpful people is the second awesome-est thing there (chicken and waffle fries tops that).
I can see the automation and analytics helping staff appropriately and offer more options for efficiency and waste reduction.
I think you hit the bullseye here, because the tasks you highlighted simply aren't done at most other QSRs. They are novel ways to apply human labor to fast food (at least, novel within their competitive space).
I may be alone on this one, but if Chick Fil A automated most of their workers, I would stop eating there. Part of the reason I go there is I am always impressed at just how good they are at customer service. There isn't another fast food restaurant that even comes close that I know of.
I hate talking to machines, I hate talking to automated voice menus instead of getting actual assistance from a human being. I hate ordering stuff online and dealing with slight one off cases. The google Ai assistant had me cringing for weeks. I especially have a deep hatred for self checkout lines. They can all burn in hell.
Why? I think that they move on to another service industry job such as customer service or something. I don't think working in a fast food restaurant is building the sort of skills that making a horizontal jump to another industry is outlandish.
I think that they move on to another service industry job such as customer service or something.
That's just something people think so that they don't have to feel empathy for people who lose their jobs to automation. It's kind of an internal excuse.
The reality is that not everyone is re-trainable. And if someone could easily get a job in customer service, or some other marginally better situation, they already wouldn't be working at a fast food joint.
In addition, many fast-food jobs are temporary/seasonal. A high school kid can get a six-month stint at MacDowell's to pay for car insurance over the summer. A call center isn't going to take him in and train him knowing that he's going to bolt come September.
Recently, I was contemplating something regarding customer service jobs and automation. I was at a fintech data conference listening to the work being put in to analyze customer support call log history to understand where prospects are in a pipeline or improve retention.
If a system can pinpoint a prospect is close to onboarding, and customer service rep is a great closer, the software could pass the prospect off to the "closer". The same could be said for keeping a customer who is on the fence from leaving. All of the sudden, a highly skilled closer has data and metrics attributable to the company's bottom line, and in theory, someone like this should become a high priced asset.
In some instances, could automation actually greatly increase the salary dispersion in certain low wage fields?
> I think that they move on to another service industry job such as customer service or something
Right, they can compete with all the other displaced workers for the #1 position most likely to be outsourced.
Hell, many Targets don't even have a customer service desk anymore. They demolish them and assign the workload of both sales and returns to a random cashier.
A lot of people are not qualified for skilled work and will never transcend entry-level fast-food jobs. If you take away those tasks that keep them productively occupied, it might be a good time to start buying stock in industries related to prison management.
There are certainly negative consequences of automation, and many existing jobs will disappear.
A key feature of the times we live in is that knowledge is ubiquitous. If an idea becomes known and understood to be feasible, and it serves a useful purpose, you can't hide it from existence. If your restaurant doesn't capitalize on these tools to improve efficiency, another one likely will. This might mean that your restaurant gets be out-competed by a better product elsewhere AND your workers will be out of a job.
Trying to freeze a system that works at a given time is becoming more and more difficult as we advance our knowledge and technology. This paradigm of rapid evolution has been playing out since the industrial revolution, and seems to be accelerating with time.
Maybe it ends badly for us in the macro sense, we'll see. I feel for the folks that can't evolve and get left behind, but I'm not sure how to help them. Resisting the change probably won't work.
We would probably be okay, if it wasn't because we are also looking at soonish fully automatic trucks, which will kill all the jobs in the trucking industry, plus all the jobs at the trucking stations, mechanics etc, plus the retail collapse.
I guess if you aren't in one of those areas, and you have a business that hires a lot of low income people, times will be good, but like you I don't think the rest of the market can take up the slack; there are only so many people who are willing to pay for laundering.
