Blog Post 6: Job Automation

Summary

Key Stakeholders

Job automation influences many different jobs in society. It turns labor force into leisure force, which affects multiple groups, positively and negatively. The first stakeholder in this issue is that of the workers in the low-skill jobs such as cashiers, drivers, warehouse workers, etc. These workers are threatened by job automation because these low skill jobs are usually the first jobs to be automated, therefore causing these people to be unemployed. A second stakeholder in this issue would be the worker who gets hired to create the automated machine to complete this job. These workers have different skills than the previous group of stakeholders, but they are being positively affected by rise in job automation. The last and final stakeholder is the consumer of the outcome of this job. The consumer here is using this device and will need to adapt to learn the new ways of working these devices.

Effects of Automation on Stakeholders

Workers with entry-level or low-skill jobs are the most vulnerable to being replaced by job automation. Since job automation can perform repetitive, simple tasks faster and better than humans, it is much more economical to replace these tasks with job automation, leading to widespread job loss for this group of stakeholders. Workers who work on job automation, however, or who operate on tasks that aren’t easily automated are likely to benefit from automation, either applying their skills to create that automated system, or using that automation to free them up for more human-oriented tasks such as critical thinking and creativity. Consumers are likely to also receive positive benefits from automation. Services such as Amazon eliminate the need to go out shopping, and provide a greater likelihood of finding the desired goods. Rather than relying on an accountant, a simple program can do bookkeeping with fewer errors and more rapidly. Automation provides a much better customer experience, eliminating delays and decreasing errors.

Culpability of Engineers for Job Loss

The legalist framework has little to say regarding job automation. There is no legislation opposed to human workers losing their jobs to automation, but any good legalist should consider the potential consequences. While job automation may provide a wealth, resulting in a more content populace, if unemployment is too high, there will be a large group of discontented citizens with no way to occupy themselves. The onus for this responsibility, however, rests with legislators to handle, and not on the engineers, who are merely performing their duties as they should. Engineers do not bear any ethical responsibility for following their role.

Job Automation

Arguments Against

Job automation can be negative for one main reason: it takes jobs away from hard-working and honest people. This can be detrimental in two ways. First, taking a person’s job away and replacing them with a machine removes that individual’s ability to provide for his or her self. The main reason that people go to work and spend their time performing a job is to put bread on the table for themselves and for their families. They depend on their job to provide them with the means to live a life which upholds the dignity of humanity. If jobs were removed and machines built in their places, these people would no longer have a way to feed and care for that which is most important to them. This would raise the unemployment rate, increase poverty, and not benefit society in the long run. The other main way that taking a person’s job away is detrimental is that it can potentially destroy their sense of purpose. If a person can no longer work, and has nothing else in their life to focus on, they can struggle to find a purpose in life. Many people find great fulfillment in their jobs, and to take that away would be cruel and would disrespect the humanity of the individual. In addition, replacing humans with robots can make the world a cold, steel-ridden place where human interaction is an oddity and interaction with non-human intelligences becomes too common. For all of these reasons, job automation could hurt humanity and be unethical in the long run.

Arguments For

There are several reasons why we may want to pursue job automation as a society. First, it can have significant economic benefit over time. As jobs become automated work can be done with more efficiency and more consistently. Factories that automate can produce significantly more units of a product in a given time frame than factories that rely on human elements within their production chain. In addition, removing human error from the production process can reduce the percentage of a product that comes off the line in a defective state. Automation can have these same benefits in non-production areas such as in security, simple service jobs, and the transportation industry. In addition, automation makes production cheaper, which benefits the corporations which drive economic growth. Another positive result that can grow out of job automation is the release of humanity from a work-oriented lifestyle. American culture today revolves around work and leaves little time for relaxation, study, socializing, hobby-pursuing, and other beneficial practices. If more jobs become automated then society can be transformed from being work-oriented to being oriented toward allowing people to live their best lives. This can also benefit communities as people spend more time volunteering or taking part in community life instead of spending that time at a job. All of these possible outcomes of job automation are positive and beneficial to the human experience.

Legalist Take

As mentioned previously regarding job loss, there are strong negatives to job automation. Job automation has the potential to displace workers, which not only leads to a discontent population, but means these workers now have nothing to occupy them, leading to free time in which they can exercise their own selfish desires. However, these negatives are outweighed by the benefits of job automation, in line with legalist concepts.

Overwhelmingly, job automation fits well with legalism The improved wealth it brings benefits the entire country. Automation is much easier to regulate and manage, which is a nod to the legalist concept of shu: the arts a ruler uses to manage and control those under him. Automation makes managing large groups or processes much easier. Additionally, it places less responsibility on individual citizens, who cannot be trusted to act ethically, eliminating the need for fa, or a system of precise laws drawn up by a ruler. A machine operates under precise rules all the time, and this eliminates ambiguity and needless debate.

A legalist approach would be include regulations that keep the rate of job loss low, but still encourage automation as a long-term goal.

Self-Driving Cars

Arguments Against

Self-driving cars are seeing machines that try to read and make sense of their surroundings with the help of sensors, cameras, and radars. It has been said that AVs promise to eliminate some 35,000 deaths caused by driver error. However, to get there more people are going to die due to autonomous vehicles not being completely ready and being tested on public roads. There has even been a case where a self-driving Uber hit a pedestrian because it could not register what this ‘object’ in the distance was. In this case, there was a human backup driver. However, this driver was looking at a screen and relaying data. People in self-driving cars will stop paying attention to the road and objects around them because these cars can drive themselves. There are currently no state or federal regulations in place around how driverless cars are being tested, which could be detrimental. Human drivers are certified and licensed by checking their vision, and cars should be checked in the same way due to the fact that people in the care are not going to be paying as much attention to their surroundings. Azim Shariff, a professor at the University of California, Irvine mentioned that riding in an AV will mean giving yourself over to a machine whose ‘mind’ humans don’t understand – and which, in a moment of crisis, may be programmed to prioritize the lives of others over your own. As a consumer of AVs, you could be risking your life by giving the car full control in regards to how it operates. It is true that human drivers and their errors cause a multitude of accidents, but it isn’t yet safe to say that self-driving cars are safer than human-driven cars.

Arguments For

Self-driving cars bring with them a lot of benefits. Arguably the most important benefit that comes with the implementation of self-driving cars is safety. It is estimated that autonomous vehicles will eliminate 35,000 deaths each year that happen because of driver error. Another major benefit that self-driving cars provide is a faster commute. With a network of interconnected cars, traffic will become less of a problem. Additionally, the wait times at intersections will be decreased significantly if not completely eliminated. The self-driving cars will be able to communicate with one another or an intersection manager that will schedule when the car can go through the intersection, so there will be no more waiting at stop lights or stop signs. Self-driving cars also bring environmental benefits. Less time spent waiting at intersections means that there will be less carbon dioxide emitted by idling cars. The current estimate is that autonomous intersections will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 to 50 percent. Additionally, animal deaths caused by roadkill will go down significantly. Self-driving cars can react and stop much quicker than a human could when an animal jumps out in front of the car. Vehicles are currently responsible for 59 percent of known panther deaths since 1981. Self-driving cars would almost completely eliminate this problem. Finally, self-driving cars are more space efficient than human driven cars. Self-driving cars will be able to park themselves. By parking themselves, they will be able to packed closer together, taking up 15 percent less space.

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Legalist Take

Upon analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars, it becomes clear that the Legalist position is in support of the technology. The main opposition to self-driving cars comes from those concerned about the dangers associated with the transitional period as self-driving cars are adopted. These incidents, however, would probably not be frequent enough to cause significant disruption to society; instead, they would be individual burdens for particular people and their families. Legalism has little such concern for individual lives. Another potential concern is that programming cars will eliminate personal moral judgements from driving and replace them with universal rules programmed by more central authorities. While some may object to such a development, the Legalist sees it as an advantage. Legalism, from its genesis in the Warring States Period, has always promoted universal ethical dictates designated by higher authorities. Indeed, one idea central to the philosophy of Legalism is that the citizens of a nation cannot be trusted to act ethically on their own. Universal algorithmic decision making offers a very easy means for governments to impose their own ethical priorities in transportation. One advantage to the implementation of self-driving cars is the ability to centrally coordinate transportation to avoid inefficiency and conflict. One current source of problems when driving is traffic jams; it is impossible to coordinate the movement of all people, particularly in large cities. This leads to enormous inefficiencies, as anyone who has commuted in Washington, D.C. can confirm. Furthermore, the chaos instigated by travel inefficiency can lead to social conflict and even more chaos. This sort of problem was central to the development of Legalism, and its preferred solution is more central control. Computer controlled cars could be the answer to this, as all cars could coordinate over a network, eliminating the desires and plans of individual drivers who might otherwise diverge from the central plan. Finally, the solution of centralized driving and navigation would help the government keep tabs on its citizens. Right now, it is difficult to keep track of where an individual is going or has gone, since their cars are completely individual entities. If navigation were controlled over a network, it would be simple for the government to access or even control this network and develop databases of the activities of citizens. This could help the state clamp down on crime, a major source of chaos within the state. Furthermore, the state could identify networks of people, which would give them potential insight into non-criminal activities that may nonetheless subvert the state, stopping it from having a “rich state and a powerful army.”