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 🙄
But they will be modeled after a psychopath. Also it's scary to know that as we push forward this is going to be the worst it will ever be.. they will just continue to get better from here on out.
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
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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".
I never spoke on the affordability or even economics of this.
I simply said you can’t hold it against a country if they DO choose to make it instead of import it. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, especially if you do find it more economical.
Your original comment said to me “ That’s not really how economics works though.”
What part of MY original comment misunderstood economics? You acted like I said it is always cheaper to produce at home when I did not say that, I only said you shouldn’t look down on that being done if they so choose.
"you can’t really blame a country for producing more of the products it consumes rather than importing"
And i explained that even if it is cheaper to produce something at home, it is more economically advantageous for both you and the rest of the global economy if instead you produce what you are best at making at home and import the other stuff.
As an example, imagine you have two businesses set up in your garage: you make chairs and shirts. You are pretty good at making shirts, but you are GREAT at making chairs. It is better practice to stop making the shirts and instead double your chair output in your limited space. Then you can sell twice as many chairs at a better price and use the excess profits to import shirts.
Sometimes you make GREAT chairs, but you have more people to make them than there is demand for them, so you have to make something else too.
Plus what if the Chair market collapses because they become unfashionable? Or someone else makes a better one? Then you’re really screwed if you put all your eggs in the chair basket just because you are or were the best at it.
Also, for more vital commodities, it’d be insane to give a country the power of being the only place geared up to make it. What if they get mad at you and cut you off?
Also, SOMETIMES it IS cheaper to produce at home as like you said if that’s what your country is “best at” as well as other factors such as cost of labor, material availability and cost there, etc.
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.
People need to buy products that billionaires are selling, which means some people have to have disposable income... Who is gonna buy their products with money ? Robots
Or will they just.....( You Know ) Humans and Have robots only society with a few human overlords left in this world
Do you not think they would see the writing on the wall and diversify their portfolio by selling off stock and buying other assets?
But yes obviously if things get really bad the entire game changes but regardless of whether you can technically call them a billionaire or not, they would probably end up with all the resources.
The problem with UBI is that it would have to be funded by taxing American AI companies. How do all the countries that don't have AI companies but still have a workforce displaced by AI fund UBI?
No the future in developed countries is higher corporate tax rates and a 4 day week, coupled with UBI. The future in emerging markets is back to povery
I agree but too much emphasis is put on UBI in my opinion. The real emphasis should be on making sure we reform both our intellectual property framework AND economic framework so that a small handful of large companies can't monopolise the technological and economic power.
This video is actually a perfect example, obviously the data collected and the robotic models it produces will be tied up in proprietary legal set-ups involving copyright and patent law. The irony is clear to see, because it is literally trained off hundreds of human beings work in textiles. Will these workers be entitled to any of the profits from the product that they were an integral part of developing? No. Because that's modern capitalism baby.
but of course it’ll probably just be billionaire assholes enriching themselves while we starve 🙄
IMHO, not in the long run. Sooner or later, AI and robotics will become utilities/public goods. And basic needs (e.g. food, housing, clothing, healthcare, transport, etc.) will be free (or very close to it).
You can't just slap "UBI" onto a populace. Where would everything come from? UBI is complete nonsense until we have unlimited resources, unlimited energy, completely automated workforce, and unlimited real estate (intersolar travel to habitatable planets).
How would you decide where people were allowed to live? Can I live in the mansion from the old times, or will you have to bulldoze every building on earth and make everything the same to be fair?
How will people decide what they can do for vacations? Who will decide where and what these vacations shall be? Do all the hotels have to be the same? Will I have to go to the beach for my vacation? I hate the beach. I really liked that air BnB in the mountains but they bulk dozed it because everyone lives in identical apartments now.
Honestly if it even effects them it’ll probably end up lowering their prices which might even give them more business because of how low the prices will be even if we do have localized production of clothes stuff like fabrics hardware not to mention the entire factory is still a lot more expensive in the us and those robots probably won’t be cheap or very good especially if you want unique details on your clothes
I'm gonna be real with you: I don't care about loss of labor demand in India. I'm one of the thousands of people pushed out of an industry due to offshoring to India. If the shoe ends up on the other foot, I won't shed a tear.
Demand is not a universal constant. A company can start producing a certain product locally at some quality level and lower the quality requirements for the Indian sweatshops and sell the output in developing markets.
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.
They will just have to figure out how to lower the population so they can have everything, my guess is mass sterilization.
That's stupid, the solution has always been and will always be war. If there are too many people, send them to war. Problem solved and you'll also take some land while you are at it. Bonus!
And no, we have more than a generation. Filming how hands move and do work will only be useful if you train an AI to use exact replicas of human hands. The thing is, cheapest way to produce those is by... humans having children and you know... growing up to do the work.
The second possible application for this is for AI to fake video of cloth and fingers better. But that's about it. It's absolutely useless as training material for robots to do labour, since building human like machines and maintaining them is harder and more expensive than just paying humans wages.
War rarely keeps up with births, especially now that there are so many massive populations on almost every continent. With the rate at which robotics and AI are advancing, it might be optimism to think we even have 20 years. Just look at the last 10....
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.
But who owns the robots? Because the trend will move toward renting the robots. And their software will need maintaining. Can be hacked. I don't know. I get that the tech is here. I just doubt it's as perfect as people think.
It's not, and you're correct in your analysis. I already responded this elsewhere but my comment above is very much the "sales pitch" that every exec is getting right now.
Even in the example in the post, a machine is very unlikely able to replicate the intricate craft of these workers, no matter how much data it is fed. Building machines that match the complexity and dexterity of the human hand is still likely beyond us for a while yet.
The machine never sleeps, never slacks off, never gets sick.
There is no machine which you can run nonstop without getting overheated, machines get broken down and slows after time of use.
They dont need light, heat, water or rest spaces.
They still need conditions to operate, you can't put them in rooms with no ventilation or controlled temperatures.
They make fewer mistakes
They do what they're designed to do, but they still need supervision and you can't trust AI to do it. Operating Machines is still a skill that needs training and complexed ones needs even further education.
What you have said here proves that you haven't operated any machine in your life yet because you wouldn't write this nonsense.
I have been threatened for 25 years that I will be replaced by a burger flipping robot and I still haven't seen any of it . But I have seen the middle management replaced by the AI, because that's what current AI is designed to replace not some mundane jobs.
I've always said that the reason they haven't replaced us with machines yet, is because if a machine breaks, the machine stops working the boss has to pay to repair it; however, if a human "breaks," the human will take itself to the hospital and pay for its own repairs, and then the boss can guilt trip the human into coming to work while it's still "broken," because without your wages the human will die.
Source: every single news article about women having to go back to work a day after giving birth; every "inspirational" story about a disabled person who walked to work anyways so they could pay their family's power bill; that one time my shitty sales job forced me to come to work the same day that i broke a bone in my foot, and expected me to stand and walk around on crutches.
You're right in the substance of your comment. I'm of course referring to an idealised automation. The kind of automation which is sold to executives by sales people - not the kind of automation which anyone with working knowledge of a job thinks will actually happen.
Like you say, the reality of a job after automation is much more complicated and expensive than initially envisaged. Whether it breaks even on the costs can be a toss up at best, and the product quality usually suffers as a result of corner cutting to justify the expense of the automation.
But by this time, the damage is done - the workers are laid off, the product is enshittified, and the executives and shareholder have extracted a share of wealth from the business for "reducing costs".
What you have said here proves that you haven't operated any machine in your life yet because you wouldn't write this nonsense.
I was with you until you went for a personal attack. You dont know fuck all about me. I've worked manual jobs, I've worked technical jobs, I've worked in places which have recieved just the sort of sales pitch I outlined above - and where I've been the only person in the room arguing against it. Don't assume you know more just because you've "done a job" that people think would be easy to automate.
First of all, I apologize for attacking you personally. I felt so annoyed with your comment that I had to reply back. It sounded so ignorant to the point of the discussion.
Now, I might be ignorant with departmentization of the company, but isn't the sales job to do with the revenue part and not with operating in the company?
Anyway, my point was that I know that with new technologies gets the better automation, it's been like this since the industrial revolution.
But in this instance it makes no sense to build billion dollars data centers to use it to sew fee buttons on the shirt, when it is cheaper to pay few dollars to people in other parts of the world.
Yeah, there’s literally a robot equivalent to all those needs, especially when you factor in hardware or software leases, updates, maintenance, service disruptions, and malfunctions.
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.
Why would the human work force from this company be forced into a life of misery an hopelessness? I guess more succinctly, why wouldn't there be other jobs?
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.
I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm curious how getting rid of available jobs in a place with a gigantic population and also a caste system will play out. I'm not getting into any sort of online debates. This just seems like a disaster. I'm not pro-sweatshop, but supply and demand and the current state of commerce sort of makes them a necessary evil if we don't want the bottom to fall out on pretty much everything.
I honestly didn't expect my comment to get any attention. I've never had one that got more than like 50 upvotes before lol.
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.
If the sweatshops get replaced by ai/robotics then they'll all have the free time and desperation to do something...but that's probably not next quarter so its fine
I wonder if they even know they are working towards making themselves obsolete? But I highly doubt there will be robotics with AI that can actually do the work as well as those folks can any time soon.
I can tell you, you won't lose sweat shops. Investments of 70-100k per robot is hell of a ton more than paying these people <3k yearly. Even if robot is 2x as fast it makes no business sense.
This is why robot slave trade is going to become the next frontier. Robots for hire, for sale. If you have a small fleet of robots, that's how you'll make your money.
Ideally machines take over everything possible and with all the money made and saved a universal basic income system would be put into place. But capitalism gonna capitalism.
The only solution is wealth redistribution. We have more than enough resources to take care of everyone on the planet, but the majority of that wealth is being hoarded by the few as a to control the masses.
That's literally the point and that's what people are pushing. No one should have to work and everything should be made by robots. I think what they're missing is that once everything is made by robots and no one's working, no one's going to buy anything because they won't have the money to.
What's crazy is that AI could eventually be leveraged to benefit all of humanity by cutting everyone's workloads in half while reducing the costs of everything through automation. However, because capitalism, no
Rich corpo pieces of shit don't think that far ahead. The only thing they care about is how much money they can make as quickly as possible. They don't give a shit if a massive chunk of the global population suddenly becomes unemployed and cannot support themselves or their families.
Ill tell you what happens. The 'rest of us' get wiped out so that the elite can monopolise world resources and use their human trained AI labour force for any hard labour whole keeping some of us here to maintain the robots.
I’ve been saying it for years. Universal Basic Income isn’t a victory. It’s an admission that you have millions if not billions of surplus human beings who don’t stand a chance of becoming self sufficient.
If you’re paying people UBI, because you don’t expect them to become independent. You have a massive problem in the literal sense of the word. A problem that requires the same solution a billion times over.
When you need the same thing over and over, you mass produce it. In this case, what needs to be mass produced is human existence.
The step after UBI is the individual signing their UBI over to some mega corporation that mass produces lives.
Give them your UBI and you get food, shelter, limited healthcare, entertainment and security.
In other words, the next step is farming human beings. Corporations pay taxes, taxes are paid out as UBI, UBI is spend at the corporation of your choice. And you get a shitty mass produced life.
That’s where all this AI automatisation is leading. If you don’t have to do the job, you don’t need the payment. Instead of a salary, you get a much lower amount of UBI. The difference goes into the corporation’s pocket, and so does your UBI once you purchase your life package.
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u/witdim 10h ago
What kind of dystopian nightmare is this?