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That doesn't make sense. If the scanner doesn't register it then it should not be on the receipt, which means he should've never walked out of the store. That also means the door alarm sensors were dead and didn't make any noise once he did walk out the store.
Suit yourself, I'll be in and out of a grocery store in 15 minutes and you'll be stuck in line. Stores sure as hell aren't going to open up more registers for anyone or anything due to the self checkout line.
My guess is that the 'eyes in the sky' (surveillance cameras) observed him bypassing the scanner. Walmart does a really good job at store security and they seldom make false accusations. If you "forget" to scan something and put it with your other (scanned) groceries the weight will be wrong and you can't finish the transaction unless you remove it. That infers that he never even moved it across the scanner. He probably picked it up and held it near the scanner for a few seconds and then dropped it back into his shopping cart.
My guess is that the 'eyes in the sky' (surveillance cameras) observed him bypassing the scanner. Walmart does a really good job at store security and they seldom make false accusations. If you "forget" to scan something and put it with your other (scanned) groceries the weight will be wrong and you can't finish the transaction unless you remove it. That infers that he never even moved it across the scanner. He probably picked it up and held it near the scanner for a few seconds and then dropped it back into his shopping cart.
It's easy to underestimate how sophisticated this technology has become. For one thing, it's the basis for the experimental stores with no checkout. The overall surveillance simply knows what you've picked up and put in your bag, knows who you are, and closes the payment loop without any overt step.
Walmart is also in the forefront of consumer tracking using this technology. Look up next time; while those dozens of little cameras certainly have security applications, their primary function is to closely track shopper activity (for marketing purposes, not security).
None of which is going to prevent people making innocent mistakes from being rousted and treated like shoplifters. The systems are not designed to promote perfect use, but the prison guard security system certainly is.
Actually, ATMs and coincident automations really did decrease bank employment when you consider the staffing levels employed by banks from the 1980's to now. Mergers became commonplace, layoffs were a part of every budget, and hiring continued to shrink relative to the economy as a whole.
I worked in the IT end of that industry from the early seventies until my departure at the start of the Great Recession. We eliminated thousands of teller positions early on with ATMs, and many more back office jobs via computer systems which I designed, helped code, and then implemented. Granted, new positions opened up elsewhere, but nowhere near a replacement rate proportional to our population or economic growth.
Today, ten years later the EMPLOYMENT RATE @ 59% is still over 3% lower than it was in 2008!
Automation first gobbles up the simple jobs. Then it suppresses employment at higher skill levels.
Eventually it guts the middle and results in a very polarized labor market comprised of many well paying jobs that only the most talented, intelligent, or skilled can perform, and a large pool of very low skilled jobs that fewer and fewer Americans will do. Social safety nets enable this choice to decline crap jobs which gives rise to a greater influx of migrants, both legal and illegal.
I believe that new technologies are a major cause of rising income and wealth inequality today.
Automation is clearly a double-edged sword.
I agree with the majority of your post. Banks used to have a lot of tellers at least five or six in every branch. Now there’s a couple one or two maybe three on Friday night. Not just ATMs now either, I can now deposit a check by simply taking a picture of it with my phone.
I disagree about social safety net. On the show I watched these tech companies are developing this technology that is cutting edge, state of the art. That’s what they do. Their company started by young tech geniuses and it’s all they think about. Its going to happen whether there are social safety nets or not. It has nothing to do with the labor force.
They’re actually going to talk about increasing social safety net, via the minimum basic income. There will not be enough jobs for the people who will need to be working in the future. There are millions of driving jobs in this country. 15-20 years from now there’s going to be a few tech guys in an office supervising 100 self-driving trucks. When the trucks get to the supermarkets, robots will unload the trucks scan the items and put them on the shelves. You the customer will walk around the supermarket taking items off the shelves scanning them and putting them in bags and you will pay without ever getting into a checkout line. Car dealerships will be replaced by CarVana and other new companies that come up to join them
. There very likely won’t be servers or waiters any longer. There will be few if any paralegal jobs. Even the ranks of lawyers will be drastically reduced. All the detail work there reading and writing up contracts at all those things are going to be done by AI, and the lawyer will only need to be there to go to court and to talk with clients. So instead of a law firm needing 350 attorneys, maybe that only need 75. Even very high skill jobs like radiologist are threatened, as even now they have developed AI programs that can spot lung cancer while it’s still undetectable by human eyes. It’s going to be millions and millions and millions of jobs funneled into just a few thousand advanced tech jobs to replace all of them.
I’m depressed now in my world of quietude where my degree will be wastpaper and the Midwest will be a vast desert.
So sorry, and my colleagues are too. There's plenty of sources of comforting lies to tune up instead.
There's also an overall comprehensive solution, but somehow the discussion always get stuck on whether or not minimum wage workers are worth bothering with at all, and how those who got it now will keep it forever.
Today, ten years later the EMPLOYMENT RATE @ 59% is still over 3% lower than it was in 2008!
Your argument fails massively.
59% is not the employment rate, it is the ratio of workers to the working age population, otherwise known as E-Pop or the Employment-to-Population Ratio.
As a result of the post-WW II Baby Boom, our population has a large number of persons age 65 or older who choose not to work and should not be compelled to work.
In 2008, the first cohort of Baby Boomers were only 62 years old.
I hope you have learned something from this discussion.
This thread has raised some really interesting questions.
One persistent flaw, though, is the circular loop about what AI is capable of and when; we've got those screaming that we're about to be displaced as a species and those blowing it off as their grandchildrens' problem.
Just some clarity on my own position... Most people have no idea how sophisticated and capable AI is, right now, today. Popular press representations tend to (ahem) treat it like any other sunday-supplement science and goshwoggle over all the possibilities and great new jobs and so forth; that's not helpful. Overzealous fans tend to overstate the capabilities based on niche experiments and limited-scope applications; that's interesting but about as relevant as experimental habitats for living on Mars. Way too many people tend to see it as an evolution of "automation" or "robotics" or something, one more step in the process they've watched for decades; this is wrong.
It's hard to express how much of a quantum jump modern AI is over any former kinds of "automation." It does NOT mean welding robots that can handle three tasks at once (which already exist). It also does not mean human levels of cogitation and blowing off Turing tests. The next gen of AI is application- and goal-focused, not what's called general machine intelligence. (GMI research continues apace, nonetheless.)
These systems are not automated spreadsheets or rote human interface boxes; we have those. They are also not white-collar workers with degrees and experience. What they are is idiot-savants, incredible power to "think" about their designed field and tasks with near-human judgment and of course superhuman focus and dedication. They are not going to replace workers who have a complex array of tasks, not 1:1. But given the choice between a 14th Floor full of accountants or clerks or actuaries or even customer agents, and a few boxes that can do the core of those jobs under the supervision of a handful of managers... just how long do you think corporate America is going to stay with all those expensive, temperamental and fragile meat computers?
To see how AI is going to invade the white-collar tiers, you have to think a little outside the box. Not as a system replacing Joe down in HR, who does everything from making coffee to covering third base on the company team, but as a system that will take over the core, routine, everyday functions of HR or whatever, using very complex but very limited-range judgment... leaving the really complex judgment and integration of the whole to a very small remaining core of humans.
This is already happening, on small scales and something just beyond experimentally. It will be a significant factor in that bottom third or so of desk/intelligence/judgment jobs within five years. And it will expand like wildfire from there, until companies will have replaced 10k's of employees with systems and perhaps a 1% retention of supervisor/manager/arbitrators who handle what the boxes can't.
Which is why the real issue is not frantically figuring out how to move the pieces around on the board - retrain accountants to be AI engineers, insist that anyone who wants a job should get a degree, pump money into job development programs, all that now-obsolete BS. We have to consider a world in which the number of "real" jobs - self- and family-supporting, with reasonable stability - steadily shrinks and there are very limited opportunities to retrain or redirect workers into (largely imaginary) new fields.
TL;DR? If you don't understand the immediate reality of AI, the likely near future in which it will impact jobs, and that much of this is like absolutely nothing ever seen before... this is not the time to clamp your mind shut on 1950s verities and a smug sense that change is always good for someone.
There will be few if any paralegal jobs. Even the ranks of lawyers will be drastically reduced.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, not to mention you don't understand AI and have never used it.
The number of jobs for attorneys and paralegals will increase, not decrease.
If you had a clue, and you don't, you would have read the report by the Legal Services Corporation, not that you have any idea what that is.
89% of low-income households have zero access to legal services. 60% of middle-income households have no access, either.
What AI will do is decrease the cost of legal services, giving middle- and low-income households greater access to legal services, especially critical legal services that are not affordable now.
In Economics, that's called market expansion.
Any competent legal administrator, not that you actually know what that is, would gladly implement AI and then market the firm's services to this new expanding market.
That will offset any potential losses, plus create additional jobs for attorneys and paralegals.
You've never worked as an attorney or paralegal, so you have no clue what actually goes on in a law office, but suffice to say that AI will never do investigations, or engage in fact-finding, or identify, locate and interview potential witnesses, or negotiate, arbitrate or mediate anything and it won't do much of anything else.
AI is good for case law research, not that you know what that is, but it doesn't know what to do with the case law it finds.
And, you want to use AI for document coding? Really?
Oh, that's right, I forgot, you have no idea what you're talking about, so you wouldn't know anything about J-M Manufacturing Co. v. McDermott Will & Emery.
Why is JM suing the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery?
Because AI, well actually AD -- Artificial Dumbass -- used in document coding turned over documents that were subject to attorney-client privilege and attorney work-product to opposing counsel and JM lost their case because of it.
So, how smart is AI? Not very smart at all. I mean, what dumbass would turn over documents that are attorney-client privilege to opposing counsel? That's like asking to lose your case.
In any event, Deloitte and McKinsey Global, not that you know who they are, only claim 39% and 23% of jobs may be replaced respectively, and neither took into account expanding legal markets.
In addition to low-income and middle-income households who will benefit from AI, it also includes small and medium size businesses who do not have access to legal services, either.
Those small and medium size businesses typically do nothing until they're sued, and even then they settle through their insurance companies, because they cannot afford the cost of litigation.
Again, any competent legal administrator will reach out to them as part of the law firm's marketing plan and bring them on board as clients.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, not to mention you don't understand AI and have never used it.
The number of jobs for attorneys and paralegals will increase, not decrease.
If you had a clue, and you don't, you would have read the report by the Legal Services Corporation, not that you have any idea what that is.
89% of low-income households have zero access to legal services. 60% of middle-income households have no access, either.
What AI will do is decrease the cost of legal services, giving middle- and low-income households greater access to legal services, especially critical legal services that are not affordable now.
In Economics, that's called market expansion.
Any competent legal administrator, not that you actually know what that is, would gladly implement AI and then market the firm's services to this new expanding market.
That will offset any potential losses, plus create additional jobs for attorneys and paralegals.
You've never worked as an attorney or paralegal, so you have no clue what actually goes on in a law office, but suffice to say that AI will never do investigations, or engage in fact-finding, or identify, locate and interview potential witnesses, or negotiate, arbitrate or mediate anything and it won't do much of anything else.
AI is good for case law research, not that you know what that is, but it doesn't know what to do with the case law it finds.
And, you want to use AI for document coding? Really?
Oh, that's right, I forgot, you have no idea what you're talking about, so you wouldn't know anything about J-M Manufacturing Co. v. McDermott Will & Emery.
Why is JM suing the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery?
Because AI, well actually AD -- Artificial Dumbass -- used in document coding turned over documents that were subject to attorney-client privilege and attorney work-product to opposing counsel and JM lost their case because of it.
So, how smart is AI? Not very smart at all. I mean, what dumbass would turn over documents that are attorney-client privilege to opposing counsel? That's like asking to lose your case.
In any event, Deloitte and McKinsey Global, not that you know who they are, only claim 39% and 23% of jobs may be replaced respectively, and neither took into account expanding legal markets.
In addition to low-income and middle-income households who will benefit from AI, it also includes small and medium size businesses who do not have access to legal services, either.
Those small and medium size businesses typically do nothing until they're sued, and even then they settle through their insurance companies, because they cannot afford the cost of litigation.
Again, any competent legal administrator will reach out to them as part of the law firm's marketing plan and bring them on board as clients.
So, learn before you spout nonsense.
My statement is based on what I’ve learned, do some research. I just told you how much faster and more accurate AI was in a head to head test in the reading and correction of a contract. And that’s now, wait another 10 years and come back so I can say I told you so.
I’m surprised someone who works in law can’t formulate a few paragraphs without resorting to insults. Getting mad at the messenger isn’t going to help.
This thread has raised some really interesting questions.
One persistent flaw, though, is the circular loop about what AI is capable of and when; we've got those screaming that we're about to be displaced as a species and those blowing it off as their grandchildrens' problem.
Just some clarity on my own position... Most people have no idea how sophisticated and capable AI is, right now, today. Popular press representations tend to (ahem) treat it like any other sunday-supplement science and goshwoggle over all the possibilities and great new jobs and so forth; that's not helpful. Overzealous fans tend to overstate the capabilities based on niche experiments and limited-scope applications; that's interesting but about as relevant as experimental habitats for living on Mars. Way too many people tend to see it as an evolution of "automation" or "robotics" or something, one more step in the process they've watched for decades; this is wrong.
It's hard to express how much of a quantum jump modern AI is over any former kinds of "automation." It does NOT mean welding robots that can handle three tasks at once (which already exist). It also does not mean human levels of cogitation and blowing off Turing tests. The next gen of AI is application- and goal-focused, not what's called general machine intelligence. (GMI research continues apace, nonetheless.)
These systems are not automated spreadsheets or rote human interface boxes; we have those. They are also not white-collar workers with degrees and experience. What they are is idiot-savants, incredible power to "think" about their designed field and tasks with near-human judgment and of course superhuman focus and dedication. They are not going to replace workers who have a complex array of tasks, not 1:1. But given the choice between a 14th Floor full of accountants or clerks or actuaries or even customer agents, and a few boxes that can do the core of those jobs under the supervision of a handful of managers... just how long do you think corporate America is going to stay with all those expensive, temperamental and fragile meat computers?
To see how AI is going to invade the white-collar tiers, you have to think a little outside the box. Not as a system replacing Joe down in HR, who does everything from making coffee to covering third base on the company team, but as a system that will take over the core, routine, everyday functions of HR or whatever, using very complex but very limited-range judgment... leaving the really complex judgment and integration of the whole to a very small remaining core of humans.
This is already happening, on small scales and something just beyond experimentally. It will be a significant factor in that bottom third or so of desk/intelligence/judgment jobs within five years. And it will expand like wildfire from there, until companies will have replaced 10k's of employees with systems and perhaps a 1% retention of supervisor/manager/arbitrators who handle what the boxes can't.
Which is why the real issue is not frantically figuring out how to move the pieces around on the board - retrain accountants to be AI engineers, insist that anyone who wants a job should get a degree, pump money into job development programs, all that now-obsolete BS. We have to consider a world in which the number of "real" jobs - self- and family-supporting, with reasonable stability - steadily shrinks and there are very limited opportunities to retrain or redirect workers into (largely imaginary) new fields.
TL;DR? If you don't understand the immediate reality of AI, the likely near future in which it will impact jobs, and that much of this is like absolutely nothing ever seen before... this is not the time to clamp your mind shut on 1950s verities and a smug sense that change is always good for someone.
This already happens. There aren’t entire floors of accountants at Fortune 500 companies. It’s not 1996. What the hell is a clerk? There isn’t an army of people doing routine work. That’s been offshored to Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, or Latin America.
The only...clerks (lol) left came from
The big four consulting firms and have a masters, a CPA, and 5 years of exp. they’re making 80 to 100k as analysts and are expected to go up or get the hell out.
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