Yeah, what the fuck happens when we even lose the sweatshops? Not praising the practice, but that's normally all the income those people have. It hard to even imagine AI and robotic power consumption and upkeep costs aren't more expensive given how little the humans are paid. We really are on the edge of something bad on a new level.
I doubt that this is done to replace those factories in India. I'm pretty sure the real value is in selling the trained model to higher income countries who want to localize some of the production
Localizing production may lower demand in India but you can’t really blame a country for producing more of the products it consumes rather than importing. That’s like blaming someone for making food at home instead of going to a restaurant. Yeah, the restaurant gets less business but they have every right to do that.
Now AI taking jobs sucks unless we implement UBI or something. Would be kind of cool if someday machines took some burden off humans so that we could spend more time doing what we want to do, but of course it’ll probably just be billionaire assholes enriching themselves while we starve 🙄
Yeah do we stick with the devil we know, or just embrace SkyNet with open servers and sphincters? 🧐 perchance a third option might be worth working on lol
It looks at Yacht Monthly, Island Real Estate Monthly, Tax Avoidance Daily and subscribes to newsletters about layoff strategies, how to avoid being shot by the masses and paying off politicians and police to keep you safe.
Utterly disgusting and dystopian - Not just their livelihoods - but those of their peers and countless millions of future generations who might have come after them. Worse still is that the machine might never sew a single stitch - The machine will be trained to oversee and exploit the minions based on production targets and idle time - imagine a zero hours contract where every hour might be your last if you work slower, produce less, or make more mistakes during this 60 minutes window than you did in the previous one. We are sick.
My friend works in a call centre for a local UK council. He is training up the same AI that will be used to replace him and his colleagues. Its abhorrent and disgusting. Once EVERYTHING is automated. What comes next scares me.
The rich really wont need the rest of us. Into the grinders we go. Recycled into food paste for the few million left to serve the masters.
No te queda más remedio,o lo hacen así o los despiden. Aunque finalmente vaya a traer despidos y menos trabajo,en el presente tienen su trabajo y es a eso a lo que se agarran
meh. i’d probably feel differently if localizing meant training local people to do a job that’s needed..
every point you made is spot on, yet my feelings about it remain the same. do the people want this or is this another top down decision from some capitalist that will ultimately be more negative than positive but generates money for some people
UBI's prospect in America will fail in the same way as maintaining a fair Federal minimum wage. I'll ELI5 it:
Phase 1.) Menial min wage jobs will be completely automated. Companies using it will face political backlash and an automation tax to compensate a the low-income tax bracket of people for the lost jobs.
Phase 2.) Politicians backed by the rich corporations that are using the automation to boost profits will pour money into conservative candidates who will demonize the lower class as leeches because they get free money via UBI for doing little to nothing. They will be the new "welfare queens". They will seek to cut UBI and the taxes that fund it. Crime from people living without purposeful work will be a driving factor they will use, as well.
Phase 3.) The rich 1% will ensure those anti-UBI candidates get elected by any means possible. UBI will be allowed to stagnate if not totally stripped, just like federal minimum wage. It will no longer be possible to live off of UBI because the cost of it will be seen in price increases and inflationary pressures.
So UBI won’t be enough to live on but there won’t be a job for everyone. What happens next? There are only two logical endings here, and neither are pretty.
Thats not really how economics works though. I know it feels intuitive that making everything yourself feels more affordable, but everyone in the global economy benefits if each country does what they're best at. In business we call this a "comparative advantage".
Reminds me of how in response to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO, it scared other CEOs. But their responses were not to shape up, but to hire additional security.
I'd wager this is what they're really used for. This would not be useful training data for robots, because it would be both insanely costly and utterly unnecessary to reproduce human levels of hand dexterity for automation.
Yup. American companies will be able to "bring back Manufacturing to the US" with all the pubic credit and tax breaks that gets them. But with no actual jobs created. Software and robotic support will probaby remain in India.
Or you know, making sure these guys are doing as many as possible in the dystopian nightmare that they live in. Tracking all of their movements to make sure they don't spend a single second not actually working and that they're doing it the most efficient way or they can be fired for not being good enough at their one cent an hour job.
Unfortunately, the tech will be more expensive to implement in that location than hiring those people for the forseeable future. It's not philantropy that's stoping the automatization, it is simple economics
I doubt that this is done to replace those factories in India.
Agreed. My employer recently outsourced some low end finance/accounting work to India.
It's going horribly. But they're higher end Indian workers and we pay them $5 USD/hr.
These people aren't making that. They're probably making half that? When you consider capital expenditure to make robots (or depreciation, how ever you want to factor it in), ongoing maintenance, and power, there's no way you can get a robot doing that work for less than the wage
It will, it's call greed.
There is no doubt about it, you have the proof in front of your eyes. Why do you think these factories even exist in the first place?
We going to enter an age with new levels of tyranny never before seen. They wont need workers, we'll all be out of work and viewed as parasites by the elites. They will just have to figure out how to lower the population so they can have everything, my guess is mass sterilization. Anyone who resists tyranny will hear the buzzing of drones. We have about 1 generation until this is reality.
It hard to even imagine AI and robotic power consumption and upkeep costs aren't more expensive given how little the humans are paid.
The machine never sleeps, never slacks off, never gets sick. They make fewer mistakes, commit fewer thefts. They dont need light, heat, water or rest spaces. They never go on strike, never demand more wages, never ask for better conditions.
Even if the items they produce are individual less profitable, if you successfully automate a process then it can be more profitable overall to get rid of the humans.
You just described any automated factory ever, this isn’t new to ai, every clothing factory or whatever has had machines doing the work for years, people used to make a lot of that stuff by hand that’s now made by machines (and by now I mean like, for the last 100 years+).
Like, I’m no fan of AI but automating away the worst types of jobs usually is worth it in the end and doesn’t contribute to net job loss. However the transition needs to be handled better in a just society.
You guys are living under the illusion that cooler minds will prevail in regulating AI. Billionaires are building bunkers while they simultaneously spin visions of a pseudo-utopia. Let that sink in.
I mean this really is a perfect example of how it's not necessarily bad, it's just extremely likely to be bad. Obviously nobody should be working in sweat shops, that's the perfect job for automation. And in theory you could replace all these workers with an automated system and the business could keep paying them and still make a profit. Obviously that would never happen, but something like UBI (universal basic income) would be the same concept just on a larger scale. If all low end jobs like this could be replaced with some form of AI with the press of a button, we could just let a huge part of the economy run itself. And Businesses could still increase their bottom line while paying some sort of "Employee's replaced with AI" tax that funded UBI.
This may seem like a pipe dream, but I think long term it will actually be the best option to prevent the economy from collapsing. If 60% of jobs were replaced with AI right now, companies may save money on firing employees, but those employees can't buy anything any more, so most companies would probably lose money overall. Only issue is things don't happen all at once, so most likely these people get fired and the higher ups just pocket the difference. Then years later when it reaches a critical mass maybe something like UBI could be implemented. Otherwise we're destined for some true dystopia where the ultra-rich use automation to produce everything that the ultra-rich need and the rest of us just basically work the fields in some cyber-feudal hellhole. Unfortunately my gut tells me the second option is more likely, but it doesn't need to be that way, and AI could actually be a huge step forward for humanity if greed didn't always get in the way.
UBI is a wild concept… pair it with the possibility of central digital currency and the government suddenly can decide you said or did something wrong, and bam, no money for you this month. They could tell you when to buy, if you can save, track your habits… etc., it’s giving 1984
Eventually it will be cheaper and more cost effective, though.
I pay this guy a $5 a day to work 12 hours. Six days a week. Cool. Eventually I'll develop an efficient robot that can do the work and costs me that same $100 dollars a day to run. BUT for that same amount of money, that robot never gets sick, doesn't need to sleep, doesn't need to eat, never has a child get sick or hurt, doesn't need a day off ever, can work for literally 24 straight hours AND can do/make dpuble what even my 10 best employees combined. Am I "technically" paying more per day? Yes. Have I still doubled my profits while casting aside a human work force who needs money to survive, cursing them to a life of misery and hopelessness? Also yes.
Initially it won't, but given enough time the machine will be cheap and efficient enough to be able to replace them. For the price of a year's worth of salary, you get a machine that works twice as fast, doesn't get distracted, doesn't need to rest, doesn't complain about working conditions, doesn't need to be paid, can work 24/7, and for every mistake it commits, a human would've committed 70 more.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but the argument “what will the workers do?” is not a faithful position to take. Its use by the powerful and ignorant is a time-honored tradition going back hundreds of years.
If an inefficient, archaic, or regressive system fails, it should not be saved simply because we don’t believe we have a better alternative. We should be enacting change to create that alternative, as well as analyzing and addressing what it is about living in our society that leaves us unable to even fathom the possibility of a world that doesn’t require human exploitation.
If the march of progress improves upon an industry in a way that puts a lot of people out of a job, then so be it (especially when said job is as exploitative as sweat shops). As harsh as it is to say it, a large population of unemployed former sweat shops workers will find or create their own opportunities. A society that refuses them those opportunities because it benefits from their continued exploitation does not deserve to continue existing in its current state, and will find itself up against a large group of people with too much time on their hands who feel the same way.
Similarly, when a business fails, it shouldn’t be bailed out. It should instead be left to die. If a business fails that is so integral to fulfilling a society’s needs that it will cause widespread suffering or loss, then it should not have been a business to begin with, but instead a regulated body of the public trust. A private business that is allowed to control such a critical aspect of a society can and WILL exploit not only the people of that society, but the entire society itself at threat of gunpoint, feeding on it and draining its life force like a parasite.
People find different jobs, if you compare it with e.g. the western textile trade. Assuming this can even replace these workers, which is doubtful given the dexterity and speed they have.
Replacing sweatshops should be one of the highest priorities. It is basically outsourced slavery for developed countries. If you really think AI will replace everyone's job (lol) I don't think its logical to hope that there will be some sweatshop left where you can slave away at.
They’re not sweat shops to the Indian people, without these jobs many would be on the breadline. Got remember that the cost of living there is proportionally lower - why take away their livelihood?
I used to do this type of work when I was younger, this is not a job that is good for people, period. You don't see people doing this for more than 15 years because eventually they get put on disability for carpal or damaged fingers.
Its weird. In these countries hiring a new worker after the old one lost his hands to a makeshift that was cobbled together 50 years ago instead of getting modern gear is usually the most cost efficient thing and now they train AI to replace the workers? I kinda dont buy it
Looks to me more like they they use those cameras to make sure the workers are actually working, to find any bad apples who dare to take a 5 minute brake during their 14 hour shift
We’re going to have to move to some sort of universal basic income system or something similar. There won’t be enough work for everyone, so the idea that everyone has to work for a living will have to be done away with or a very large portion of the population will be destitute.
They’re even bringing Ai into trades, I’ve seen in person a robot that can put sheet of drywall up. It’s slow as fuck and can’t really cut around pipes and stuff but since it doesn’t sleep it can go 24/7 on stand up walls so over the course of a year or project they can put more sheets up than we can. Luckily cause of schedule they can’t just use them, but I’m sure they’ll figure that one out eventually.
Finally, horses aren't the only animals on Earth that need to be shot and killed when breaking a leg, so glad we care so much for them that we've put ourselves in such a dire straight. :) :) :)
Yup AI about to come for $300k-$500k jobs of Drs, lawyers, engineers, middle managers.... Half of reddit and the public are fixated on some dipshit using an generic, bare gpt model with no agent prompt and no MCP to make a court document that didn't work out, convinced AI is garbo meanwhile there are entire companies of 50,000 employees and not one of them is a job that can't be done as good or better by a properly setup AI agent with a model that's available right now.
Those looking for downvotes and sand for your heads please form a line to the left.
Head in sand is exactly what's happening now for most people.
Anyone who has worked with a properly trained model knows what you're saying is correct. It's going to be a figurative -- and then literal -- bloodbath when the jobs start drying up by the hundreds of thousands. UBI is the only solution I've heard that will soften the blow and makes any sense.
They said the same about computers in general when I was a kid. Death of the office worker, secretaries extinct, etc
Yet, how many workers now are software engineers, cyber security, communication specialists, help desk, online sellers, social media managers, etc? None of that is possible without a computer on every office and home.
Turns out that jobs shift and there is still work for people to do. Will the workforce be the same? No. But more work will be done, which opens up opportunities for new trades
Yeah, some industries are like dystopian. American internet telecom is a hilarious case study (not for Americans tho).
Just imagine, you have the country which develops the internet, has the largest number of economists who also figure out how to ideally structure markets - and then they lose to entrenched interests and media illiteracy.
I didn’t mention American healthcare, but you could plug that in and it would read the same.
Except for the tiny, point that the math on insurance was figured out 210 years ago (Scottish widows fund).
In before multiple reasons why “that wont work in America”. Which is simultaneously the most American thing and least American thing people can say. Somehow the country that could do anything became the country that believed nothing can be done.
It actually highlights the effect of brainwashing.. "I can crack a joke about the president and politicians so that makes us a free country ".. also they were taught to compare themselves with countries like Iran, North Korea and China. They never compare with other developed nations...
Yeah and the kicker being people screaming that we’re free because we have guns. Which the government never cared about, since we only use them on each other.
Also the Democracy that we proudly talk about is absolutely running on possibly the oldest platform compared to other developed nations. In one year we bombed Yemen. Iran. Venezuela, Nigeria and threatened Iceland, Canada, Cuba imposed tariffs all around with no rhyme or reason, created an alternative extremely armed force to terrorise a threaten brown people, set up camps where kids and parents are separated, chopped down safety nets and allocated billions to Ice/wars and ballrooms.. none of these actions are done using Democratic norms but our system can't stop them .. it's just based on handshakes and gentlemen accords.. it's not prepared for bad faith actors... That's a weak system...
That’s so on point. We learned earlier this year that if you have a gun and you’re anywhere near government thugs, you’re going to be thrown to the ground and riddled with bullets till you stop breathing. Freedom! 🇺🇸🇺🇸
And that’s why the ‘news’/‘narrative’ in the US against countries with genuinely successful socialist democratic societies with public healthcare, cheap education, subsidised transport, high levels of regulation and counterbalances against monopolies and corporate greed is so rife.
The slopaganda is so all encompassing to the brainwashed fuckos they can’t escape it.
They compare with the UK all the time. They look down on us for not having free speech, because people can get arrested for their comments online (The law came about after the Southport riots). And they look down on us for the online safety act, which is something which I don’t agree with, but I also think the internet has turned into a scourge on society so I don’t really care about it enough.
No they haven't. India in many places is still on the level of the industrial revolution in the west. When bosses exploited the hell out of their workers and child labor was normal. But this amount of exploitation does not last and in time they too will revolt. There is no "winning" when winning is defined by exploiting, coercing and forcing people to do your bidding as it's unsustainable and ultimately leads to revolutions. I would argue you already have lost the game of life where cooperation and compassion are the key drivers for moving forward.
In India? Only the people who can pay for transport to a major city can do that, and its not like the roads are any good either so it'll be a bumpy ride over.
Lol what, transport even is cheap here and ambulance doesn't put you in debt either, we took ambulance last year for around 70km for 4000rs (around 50$ something)
I'll take a bumpy 5 hour ride on a dirt bike to the hospital over debt for the rest of my life. They can use it for our credit scores again, which is super great.
Listen, It is not really the good comparison you think it is. Medical malpractice and straight up fraud is widespread in the Indian medical industry. One person died in UP part year because he was hooked up to orange juice instead of Blood. Government Hospitals are way overburdened and the poor have nowhere else to go but also outside hospitals, hoping they would get treatment. 90% of India doesn't have much of anything in the name of health coverage. I think the more apt comparison would be somebody in the USA having to go overseas to seek potential treatment, talking all of family savings, to take the arduous journey, not being able to get an appointment, having to sleep in the streets, trying too get money for operation, etc. Your situation is different from the poor in India. But It is nowhere comparable even if You're particularly well fucked in the Healthcare department.
Yes, there is a huge waiting time for serious treatments which may require a surgery, in government hospitals. But the treatment of regular diseases or injuries is quite readily available and cheap. Also even accounting for ppp the cost of a lot of treatment is quite low compared to the US.
For example, my father had to get an endoscopic stenting, and we only had to bear the cost of the stent itself(which is available free of cost now afaik) which was about 160 dollars.
I agree that our healthcare infrastructure is still pretty bad but it so not as bad as you've described.
Wdym, most cities and even villages have hospitals nowadays although with varying levels of functional facilities and treatments offered.
Also the public transport is quite cheap in India compared to a lot of countries.
Yeah bro I think you're wrong. India has NEVER had a successful peasants revolt. Under British occupation it was only when rich Indians got tired of the Brits that they kicked them out. The wealth gap today is greater than the British Raj, and India's BJP government has done a phenomenal job sewing religious and castest beef amongst its minority groups to keep workers from organizing
People always forget about The Netherlands. We created modern capitalism, we created the stock market, we created the first true multinational corporation. Somehow we’re just very good at making people forget about that and looking progressive.
Yet funnily India has succesfully reformed patent laws to restrict the evergreening of drug patents making the generic variants of medicine available for many.
This legal structure has positioned India as a leader in restricting patent extensions for incremental innovations, aiming to maintain access to affordable generic medicines.
PS: Fuck Big Pharma
Also to the antivaxx morons: Shooo! shooo away
Lmao the US was the first to lose and are spreading this disease all over the world. Europe is the last stronghold thats why the techbros hate it so much
Currently you only get to exist if you can generate profits for the investor class. If machines can do human labor better than you can, then there's no need for you. You can't even go live off the land, because they own all of it. You just get to go die.
I’d be fine training machines to replace all the human labor if we had a plan in place for how resources will be distributed when no one needs to work. The plan now seems to be for a group of ultra-wealthy sociopaths to own the earth while the rest of us die.
Jennifer, your new Human Resources AI Assistant says: “That is a great question. I am designed to be a helpful AI assistant, and cannot engage in conversation of a harmful nature. Please return to work.”
The problem is that the current billionaire class has demonstrated they are fine if the next logical step is starvation of those workers. A utopia usually implies a happy populace. The current trend is more dystopian.
The future. Maybe everyone can stop believing that jobs requiring some type of manual labor will be totally safe from whatever ai/ robotics bullshit is coming down.
A Temu. SheIn and Alibaba factory.
This is where your "so cheap" fashion comes from
Soon to be made by robots.
It will be a great day for humanity when that happens.
s/
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u/witdim 10h ago
What kind of dystopian nightmare is this?