Amazon's humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won't calm workers' fears of being replaced. - Digit is a humanoid bipedal robot from Agility Robotics.
Amazon's humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won't calm workers' fears of being replaced. - Digit is a humanoid bipedal robot from Agility Robotics.

Amazon's humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won't calm workers' fears of being replaced.

I often hear people say there is no need to worry about robots taking jobs, as automation has always done that, but new jobs have been created. The problem with that line of thought is - what happens when AI & Robots can do all the new jobs too? They'll be much cheaper. What business is going to survive paying human wages (+health +social security contributions, etc) - when another business can do the same with robots/AI for pennies?
At that point we'll finally have to give up on capitalism, we'll employ a UBI for everyone and live like a retired Picard.
How did the Picard family have an enormous house, and hundreds of acres of land in a socialist society?
At that point the working class gets so hungry that we wage a total war for our survival against the wealthy. Or we get propaganda and bread and circuses sufficient to keep us barely away from it
That seems very dramatic. I wonder if the Covid pandemic is a more realistic example of how things will play out. It's amazing how in the space of only several weeks in March-April 2020 the whole planet changed so dramatically, and yet in such a calm, orderly fashion.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglas
I think a common misconception is that people will find new jobs. If I'm remembering correctly, studies on automation of furniture production found that displaced workers mostly just fell into poverty.
Certainly SOME people will find better jobs, but if it were simple and easy for people to find "high skill jobs" instead of thier warehouse work, they would have already done it.
And yet, nobody complains about the mechanical loom anymore.
If you've invested a lot training to be a master weaver, yeah, there's no getting those years back when you're replaced. That the number of jobs stays the same is completely and verifiably true, but there's definitely losers every step of the way, who basically just get knocked down to unskilled labour, or who have to relocate altogether (but usually more winners).
I think that absolutely is the point of transition. Making a few jobs obsolete is progress, making them all obsolete is new and uncharted territory.
Then new jobs will open.