This answer isn't wrong, but it's also not uncommon for businesses to use increased efficiency to cut labor costs, such as achieving the same capacity with fewer workers and saving on payroll and benefits. For workers at risk of being replaced, it isn't necessarily that they have no skills (though that can be true), but rather that the skills they have used to make a living no longer offer that because automation options have improved. The suggestion that workers whose tasks can be automated are worthless and valueless is a big part of the fearful and scornful attitudes the OP describes.

@Upper_Case I'd also add that it keeps the company competative and therefore makes the company and therefore at least most of the jobs more secure.

@Wesley Long Sorry it's not really related to your answer directly but, I'm writting my professional thesis on work automation and its impact. Any chance we could discuss about it in the chat for instance ? (Although I've never used it before). Thanks in advance

@Upper_Case I believe the general fear and scornful attitudes is due to severe misunderstanding of how AI and robotics works. We have produced far too much "AI replace human" fiction.

@Upper_Case I see no suggestion that "workers whose tasks can be automated are worthless and valueless" in this answer. What is suggested is subtly (but definitely) different: "workers whose only skill can be automated are as valuable as the automaton replacing them".

@Nelson Just because it's a work-in-progress doesn't mean it's fiction...

@Nelson the fears of mass human uemployment may be overblown, but individuals getting unemployed (and subsequently struggling, especially if they're older) due to automation is an historical fact. Automation makes us better off on average, not for every individual.

Agreed with @Upper_Case. And whether a task can be automated has little to do with the level of human skills of the worker. Nobody would say Kasparov had "no real skills" just because he was beaten by an AI.

@lvella It's right here: "There are staff who have no real skills, and they make a living by doing things that can be automated". The difference is between no real skills and only skill-- the former indicates that if a task can be automated, ability to do that task is not a "real" skill. Downgrading their capabilities to nothing because automation improves and then not really caring about that change destroying their livelihood is part and parcel of that attitude. Whether or not I agree with the phrasing in your comment, it's simply not what is written in the answer.

I'll clarify for both of you: There are people with no real skills who memorize task lists, and just execute the tasks, without any comprehension of context or what their function actually produces / accomplishes. Their work is limited by their lack of ability to tasks that can be reduced to 1,2,3, if this then that. Those tasks are RIPE for automation. The point of automation is to take people who do those tasks who DO HAVE skills and free them up to use those skills more productively.

@WesleyLong The reason you're getting so much flak is because terming the abilities as not a "real skill" is dismissive and condescending. If someone created a software-generating AI that ended up obsoleting 90% of the existing programming jobs, it wouldn't be nice to turn around and call your c# abilities "not a real skill." All you have to do to make the answer more palatable is simply rephrase it to something like, "There are staff who don't possess immediately employable skills beyond what you're automating. You're a threat to them."

@WesleyLong. Nm. Was trying to use empathy to show you how one section was condescending and could be improved with a small tweak. Which is pointless if you're actively shooting to be condescending.

@Kevin - Not condescending. Honest. What many call "empathetic" is actually just patronizing. Look at #2, #3, and #4 here: qz.com/work/1525595/… Especially #3. I've seen entire companies taken out by this one.

@WesleyLong All human tasks can be reducible to if-then style task lists. We just don't see it that way because, when we come across a problem of exponential complexity, we approximately reduce it to polynomial complexity via heuristics. This gives us the illusion that we're doing something deeper than a task-list. But AI already beats us in many problems of that nature (e.g. playing chess, diagnosing skin cancer), and it's already getting better. So your statement "no real skills... doing things that can be automated" can, in principle, apply to all humans.

@Bridgeburners - Your characterization completely ignores creativity. Leaving aside art, for the moment, I'd invite you to review Bloom's Taxonomy, specifically synthesis and evaluation. Analysis, also, is not covered in what you state. Contextual awareness and inference are still "fuzzy things" only a gray lump or neurons are good at.

@TomW. Some years back I visited China on numerous occasions as part of developing / producing a product. On one visit the factory manager, who cared for his staff about as much as any manager I've met, discussed the new substantial rise in the Chinese minimum wage rate. (It may at that stage have been formalised and not have been formal previously). He lamented the changes as he said that in order to remain in business it meant that he was going to have to change from a close to cottage industry + high tech machines style to one with some degree of automation and to reduce staffing somewhat.

@Russell McMahon thanks for sharing this ! It's really interesting. If you want to share more of your experience and knowledge on jobs and process automation, let me know, we can discuss about it in more detail.

@TomW. I'm happy to talk about what I know - although it is liable to be not vastly wider than the sort of thing in that comment. The products I was working with aimed at relatively low cost manufacturing so largely did not get into more advanced automation. Lots of hands where it made sense. I can be contacted by email (apptechnz gmail). |One factory had a pick and place machine in a room and next door a table with many workers manually adding two different types of components each (maybe N of) then passing the boards on. Clearly there was a a tradeoff with P&P machine sometimes cheaper.

@Russell McMahon Thanks I'll send you an email later then !