You're gonna lose your jobs!

[vikingchyk]

I may "not know what the fuck" I'm doing, but I'm certainly NOT an asshole.

I was an asshole once at a SCO, but it was totally justified, IMO. It was at orange apron, and they had NO regular checkouts open. The "weigh the bag" method of SCO kind of fails when the item you are buying won't fit into the bagging area and/or stay in the bag (I think it was a broom) After listening to the automated voice bitch at me repeatedly to bag my item, and being ignored when I tried to flag a human for help, I got fed up, dropped the rest of my items onto the floor, swore, and stalked out.

[Dreamstalker]

All of the bag-scale SCOs I've ever dealt with have issues, even without the odd item that's too light to register.

[Food Lady]

Good grief; our store got SCOs months ago and no one has lost a job. If anything, we're begging people to come to work when they should because we need them. Not only that, but I'm very part time now and needing time off. I asked a supervisor just Saturday if he knew of any cashiers that needed hours desperately because I could give them away, and he said no, most of them were close to full time and didn't need extra hours.

But that line is right up there with "Get a real job!" as one of those lines that, just... oh damn, there goes my eye twitch again.

You, know I did get me one of those "real jobs", well, what the SCs are referring to. Somehow I still don't think of myself as better than my retail cohorts. Any work you do well with a good work ethic is valid, period.

[No Coupons 4 You]

The assholes I am talking about is the ones who go to self scan and expect you to scan their stuff.

[Seanette]

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever

Wait...are you talking about SCO's, or SC's...?

Yes.

[Pixelated]

The paperwork, like delivery certificates, doesn't do itself, and we don't have a posse of helpful elves to stock the shop, sign for deliveries, answer the phone, order stuff etc.

Leaving aside the customers who will continue to want to come in and pay, have you ever actually tried explaining this part to these idiots? Just wondering what their response was, if you did ...

[Pixelated]

"I can't wait to start collecting unemployment!" Wonder how they'd react to that?

OMG yes ... "Yep, can't wait to start getting those welfare cheques so I can just goof off all day ..." Betcha that snicker of theirs would freeze really fast.

Pretty much, yeah. Especially at supermarket petrol stations, where the fuel is cheaper than at branded ones.

Thank you ... that explains why the local supermarket petrol station (and this is not one of our cheaper supermarkets!) always seems to have lower-priced gas ... sometimes MUCH lower than the surrounding branded stations. Always wondered why that was.

I also heard things that were so completely wrong it was laughable, like women with prostate cancer (women don't have prostates) or men with ovarian cysts (men don't have ovaries.) Voice recognition doesn't catch things like that. Voice recognition also doesn't catch things like wildly inaccurate lab reports or other types of inaccuracies (I once transcribed a report on a 202-year-old man, if I could believe his date of birth. He was actually 102, which is still very impressive but a lot more likely.)

It's like spellcheck ... people seem to think it's some kind of awesome infallible solution to their own spelling problems. It's not, of course, because if it sees "They were going two the train station" it zips merrily past it ... because "two" is a word. The fact that it's the wrong word is not something spellcheck can catch yet (AFAIK, anyway. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. )

YUP pizza and ordering/delivery will go 100% automated in 5 - 10 years

*snip*

sorry I believe this will NEVER happen. This means the SCs will be required to ACTUALLY go outside of their residences to get said pizza order via either a drone OR self-driving (no driver or human involved) vehicle. Stifferina who wants stuff OR believes that something was ordered but not on the order (meaning NEVER ordered), to the "Where is XYZ or ASB or GHI???????? !! elevendy eleven.

Hotels and most apartment buildings are going to be REAL FUN in an automated world.

Leaving aside the SCs (who will probably vandalize the vehicle in their rage ... and then realize they can't get it to GO AWAY so gee, they now get to explain why they've got a wrecked self-driving vehicle in their front yard ...) you are right on about hotels and apartment buildings. Go down five, 10, 15 floors to pick up your pizza? Not bloody likely.

[Ironclad Alibi]

It's like spellcheck ... people seem to think it's some kind of awesome infallible solution to their own spelling problems. It's not, of course, because if it sees "They were going two the train station" it zips merrily past it ... because "two" is a word. The fact that it's the wrong word is not something spellcheck can catch yet (AFAIK, anyway. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. )

Well, since you asked. MS Word does have a grammar checker along with its spelling checker. However, it did not pick up on the above mistake.

[Argabarga]

We'll need to invent an automated SC that can complain to the automated delivery robot that the order is wrong, so the delivery bot can point out that it is not, and the two can then stalemate until someone's battery runs out... freeing us all up to do more important things!

Win win!

[Pixelated]

Well, since you asked. MS Word does have a grammar checker along with its spelling checker. However, it did not pick up on the above mistake.

I did not know that. Thank you for the heads-up. I use MS Word on an almost-daily basis; will have to take a look at that.

[Swordsman422]

~$50k it took to get where I am. You know what I get hit with? Drones. "Soon the jets will fly themselves."

Yeah, please keep telling everyone that. No wonder guys with my skillset are in demand so much. The training is sticker-shock expensive. Starting pay at your first flying job (in a sophisticated aircraft carrying passengers) is almost as good as flipping burgers at a fast food joint. There are crew rest regulations, so crash pads, sleeping in crew lounges, and "checking the overhead panel" is (still) a thing. It's NOT a meritocracy, so just because you are a good pilot, there are dozens of other guys ahead of you who have been building their seniority and you still have to deal occasionally with Captain Incompetent (y'know, the guy who couldn't jump and land it without rolling an ankle if the wind is other than calm) who thinks he is God's own gift to aviation.

Please, keep telling everyone that the front seats of airliners are going to be filled by a robot that has zero self-preservation instinct and zero fucks given about the fleshy, squishy humans sitting behind it by the hundreds. Maybe the technology industry will actually make an AI that could fly a plane. And then it could be smart enough to make an even better version of itself without our help.

I say all this jokingly, but my truest fear is that within our lifetimes we will see so much of the workforce replaced with automation that the economy simply can't support a human population of 7.5 billion people.

[Aria]

And I can see this working out only one of two ways...

1 - We have to completely revamp our current system into something completely different.

2 - Bloody revolution.

I'm afraid I think 2 is more likely. :P

[Nunavut Pants]

~$50k it took to get where I am. You know what I get hit with? Drones. "Soon the jets will fly themselves.".

Oh Gord I love that! I used to work in aviation research for a couple of decades. The sheer number of ways that an aircraft can get f***ed up is truly mind-boggling! And there are layers upon layers upon layers of different things that happen to an aircraft, ranging from the very small (control surface movement) to the large (aircraft attitude and altitude) to the huge (aircraft flight path relative to other aircraft and airspace boundaries).

Tell them when Tesla makes a car that can drive from L.A. to New York with no human intervention, including stop-and-go rush hour, and after the customer rides in such a vehicle with a 5000-lb bomb that will detonate if the car goes off-road or hits anything, then you'd only be a couple of decades away from self-flying planes...

[Pixelated]

I've heard of the concept of pilot-less planes. You wouldn't get me on one for any amount of money. There's an excellent story in Isaac Asimov's "robot" stories (title of the story is Risk) in which Dr. Susan Calvin sends a young engineer (I think) into a malfunctioning spaceship, which was to have been piloted through hyperspace and back by a robot. The ship hasn't gone anywhere, and the robot is basically frozen in place (it can't move until it's been to wherever it was going and has come back). Anything could go wrong at any moment.

The end line of the story was: humans can think outside the box. Computers and robots can't. So "find out what's wrong" or "figure out what's wrong" is not an order you can give a computer (or a robot). I've watched a lot of the "Air Crash Investigations" episodes and the number of times a pilot has pulled a rabbit out of the hat, so to speak, is amazing. Let me know when you've got a computer than can do that and I'll consider getting on that plane.

And I can see this working out only one of two ways...

1 - We have to completely revamp our current system into something completely different.

2 - Bloody revolution.

I'm afraid I think 2 is more likely. :P

This is our equivalent of the original Industrial Revolution, and the impact is about the same. There's some speculation going on in various countries about providing the general public with a Basic Annual Income. Supposedly there's a trial run being contemplated in Ontario, although how close it is to actually happening is anybody's guess. I suppose that would fit under #1 on your list.

Not looking to start any fratching on the subject, by the way; I just mention it as an idea that is being tossed around in a few places.

[wolfie]

For more "wierd stuff going wrong that takes a human to catch", try Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem.