back to article Retail serfs to vanish, all thanks to automation

About 80 per cent of jobs in retail transportation, warehousing and logistics and 63 per cent of jobs in sales are at risk of disappearing, thanks to increasingly capable automated systems. This bleak news – for workers, though not necessarily for employers – comes from Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director for …

Page:

    1. Orv Silver badge

      Re: Good news

      Educated jobs will take longer to automate, but they're easy to centralize, because most of them don't require person-to-person interaction. (There are exceptions -- medicine is one big one.) We're seeing this in IT right now, with companies letting sysadmins and support people go and contracting out instead. And what is the cloud if not a massive centralizing of server administration?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good news ???

      Let's say we made some massive technological improvements, and fully one third the jobs done today by people are done by machines in 2040. Some jobs are created servicing the machines in various ways but obviously a fraction of those they replaced. You may gloat that you're educated and have a job that can't be replaced (which isn't necessarily true, among the jobs that are already being replaced are high education jobs like lawyers, accountants and radiologists) but that's pretty short sighted.

      How does you having a job (or having had a job if you will be retired in 2040) protect you against the societal upheavals that would occur with so many people not only losing their job but having no hope of getting a job? What happens to your tax rate, as they need to be supported lest they revolt? Perhaps you refuse to help support them with your taxes, and you'd be happy to live in some fenced off community with a perimeter patrolled by giant police robots to keep the huddled masses at bay?

      Now obviously this will come slowly, but it is already happening and we're already seeing the first signs of this upheaval (Trump and Boris) and things are going to get harder for those who feel they've got the short end of the stick - i.e. the uneducated or those who are educated but happened to choose the wrong field. They've seized on nutcases the first time around. The next wave of politicians speaking for them will be a lot slicker and not so easy to dismiss.

      1. the Jim bloke
        Terminator

        Re: Good news ???

        This is why one of the first targets for automation needs to be law enforcement / prole suppression.

        If you dont have your ED 209s to keep the great unwashed in line, they WILL be "doing it in the street and frightening the horses."

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I find it...

    ...quite frightening and I'm not that old. Amazon Go looks like it won't take off for years. Was supposed to be available early 2017 and still not. But the people behind all these ideas don't seem to be thinking about the people they are putting out of work. I also still wonder why we don't get discounts at the self service tills when we're saving the store money. Saving them money from not having to pay someone to man that till. I'm having to do it myself, so surely give me an fing discount. But then I realise if those tills gave a discount, everyone would use them and more people on the normal tills would be out of work.

    It's the same with "the cloud". Being in IT it's quite scary realising the job I have been doing for years is going to be phased out by the cloud. Unless I want to go and work in a data centre somewhere and learn loads more than I'm already required to know. My head will explode. I love IT but it's making me wonder if I need to look elsewhere because automation and the cloud in IT is starting to kill our jobs as well.

    1. spacecadet66

      Re: I find it...

      "I also still wonder why we don't get discounts at the self service tills when we're saving the store money."

      When a business finds a way to cut their costs, they have a choice between two courses of action:

      (a) Pass the savings on to the customer

      (b) Pocket the savings

      Guess which alternative virtually every business since the dawn of time has elected for.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: I find it...

        Because 9 times out of 10, what's the purpose of a purpose? Indeed, of ANY enterprise? To make money for the owner(s). Otherwise, why do it at all? It's simple human condition, really, and it would be hard to envision any way to change that behavior: not even using the law (since being monied, they could just decide to up and move away).

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "This shift will contribute to the ongoing decline in urban retail and mall footprints, space likely to be filled by the e-commerce firms looking for warehouse space and distribution nodes in and around densely populated urban areas, provided municipal zoning regulations adapt."

    I doubt it. A well organised warehouse/distribution centre should be able to shift more stuff than the equivalent volume of shopping space. And note the metric is volume, not area. Low rise won't be attractive.

    It should be payback to all those business park landlords who've let their car parks out to parking vultunres when they find they've helped drive away the customers who ultimately paid the rents on the buildings. But I suppose they'll just make more money by developing the redundant space for housing.

  3. steviebuk Silver badge

    I see...

    ...with Amazon Go, everyone is young and pretty. No old people appear to exist according to Amazon. And similarly no disabled people appear to exist so everything is at height. With no one manning the shops, how will disabled people use their automated shops? If no one will be working at them, will everything be cheaper? Will the suppliers agree to take less of a cut due to these discounts? Will it just consist of security to stop people jumping the barrier and stealing everything? Who will the old people talk to when they go to shop if there is no one there? There are still a lot of old people who either don't like new tech or can't afford a mobile phone and contract required to use their store.

    Maybe, just maybe, this will create a revival of old local stores with actual people manning them because not everyone wants Amazon to be able to monitor everything you're buying.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I see...

      "And similarly no disabled people appear to exist so everything is at height. With no one manning the shops, how will disabled people use their automated shops?"

      They'll be encouraged to go online where physical handicaps are less of an issue and they can shop from the privacy of their homes. Unless you need something yesterday, which can be avoided with some planning.

      "Maybe, just maybe, this will create a revival of old local stores with actual people manning them because not everyone wants Amazon to be able to monitor everything you're buying."

      But no one would be able to afford them.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: I see...

        But no one would be able to afford them.

        And that's one part of the two part problem of the local store.

        No one can afford the products and the store owners can't afford the rent per sq m/ft because even now, current real estate prices do not favor small enterprise... and rents NEVER go down.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I see...

          "No one can afford the products and the store owners can't afford the rent per sq m/ft because even now, current real estate prices do not favor small enterprise... and rents NEVER go down."

          Long established family businesses on the high street probably own their property. Business rates would be a concern though.

          Our surviving local store seems to do quite well and employs about half a dozen people. They have carved a niche for lawn mower maintenance and general household small needs like tools, paint, kitchen items, light bulbs etc.

          They are usually cheaper than their only nearby supermarket competition. They display their larger items like garden equipment and furniture in a traditional large-ish area on the pavement outside the shop. At night it is interesting to see them pack it all away into every available space inside the shop.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I see...

            "Long established family businesses on the high street probably own their property. Business rates would be a concern though."

            There's also pressure to sell, especially as they get older as they want to get their wills in order and their children may not be willing to continue the business. Land grabbers know this.

            "Our surviving local store seems to do quite well and employs about half a dozen people. They have carved a niche for lawn mower maintenance and general household small needs like tools, paint, kitchen items, light bulbs etc."

            Hardware stores are one of the last stalwarts, but even they face pressure from big-box hardware stores like The Home Depot and Lowe's. Consider: the Home Depot is one of the largest retail businesses in the world, right up there with Kroger and Walmart.

            "They are usually cheaper than their only nearby supermarket competition."

            What if the nearest competition, however, is a big box? There's one reason Walmart's often called the Bane of Main Street.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So presumably all of the online shopping will be unloaded & delivered into people's houses by robots - good luck with that.

    1. Charles 9

      Not as difficult as you think. Most houses they just need to get to the doorstep. As for the rest, things can adapt. Blocks can perhaps have a dedicated person/robot (either way specialized for that location) to do the last bits from a common receiving area.

  5. Chris Miller

    Why should freight be carried from New York to Chicago by railroads when we could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?

    Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Unemployed people can't by things.

      Economic Collapse 101

    2. Charles 9

      "Why should freight be carried from New York to Chicago by railroads when we could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?"

      The same reason nonliving cars replaced horses: the little matter called upkeep.

  6. ecofeco Silver badge

    Yeah... nope

    Full automation has been the capitalist wet dream for 100 years.

    I work in, on and near large scale production systems. As big they come. None bigger. Globe spanning. They still employees thousands of people at the sharp end and there is no plan within my lifetime to replace them because... it's really not cost effective.

    Sure, there has been some automation, just like there always has, but wholesale replacement is not going to happen any time soon.

    So take it from someone who actually works on these systems and not the ivory tower gits. It ain't gonna happen for a long time.

    Especially not given the current state of shitware.

  7. MaldwynP

    Killer people

    Forget killer robots. The idea that you can pay a basic income for the 80% of the population that will be redundant by 2030, does not understand the basics of life. All things need a purpose, however small. The idea that we will be happy staying at home doing 'arts' or odd jobs will end in tears. Look out robots, the people are coming for you with pitchforks and fiery brands.

  8. Christian Berger

    Well It might go another way

    Instead of the "Singularity" we might get the "Crapularity".

    We experience technology working less and less well. Ask a 1980s programmer to make a little database table editing program, and they'll write a few lines of dBase. As a 2017 programmer and you'll get several Java or PHP frameworks cobbled together which might, if everything was done competently, be as good as the 3 line solution from the 1980s.

    This is what we get today. Things become more and more complex. Where you used to have a simple manual listing commands to drive a peripheral, you now have huge software abstraction layers which usually lack the function you want to have.

    Currently companies like Google or Amazon still get the people who know how to solve a problem as simple and flexible as possible. It's unclear if this will continue. Eventually those people will retire and unless we ramp up education, there might not be a generation which grew up with actual computers.

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like