
Why is this job not handled by a machine yet? - aidenlivingston
http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/08/why-is-this-job-not-handled-by-a-machine-yet/
======
NamTaf
Counterpoint: a few years ago, having been stuck in abnormally high traffic on
the way to the airport, I was running right on the cusp of the arbitrary
check-in deadline for my flight. I began the automated checkin service, which
was comparitively extremely slow on that day also. It let me start the
process, but threw an unspecified error when I got to the final stages to
print my boarding pass and bag tags. Upon retrying, I was past the check-in
deadline. Buggery.

Walking over to the check-in counter, a polite explanation of the situation I
found myself in (and, possibly, my moderate-level status with the carrier but
I don't fully know) made the service attendant remove the problem in about 30
seconds, guaranteeing that both I and my luggage would make the flight with no
problems despite being 'technically past the deadline now'.

Flesh-based interaction points, by their very nature, have a tendancy to span
a far broader range of service quality than machines. The bad are far worse
because machines don't gossip and hate their jobs. Conversely, machines have
little hope when things go south compared with a good service employee, who'll
do their level best to go above and beyond their basic responsibilites to make
whatever issue you have either go away or minimally impact you.

My experience is that one of the most apparent examples of this is if you ever
find yourself significantly up the greasy ladder of the airline status game
for whatever reason. I postulate that because carriers have realised that
'bending the rules' is a relatively 0-cost commodity to exchange for brand
loyalty and this is precisely factored into the training and job directives of
their employees.

~~~
AznHisoka
i have had similar experiences with check out machines in Target and large
retailers. they puke if you dont follow the directions to a T.

Now I deliberately avoid any automated checkout and go straight to the human
cashier. if you insist on replacing humans with machines, it has to be
flawless

~~~
maverick_iceman
I prefer automated checkouts far more than human cashiers. It's much faster.
Maybe there's some problem 20% of the time which is quickly resolved by an
employee. (People who would say that the system still needs humans ignore the
fact that one person can now look over six checkouts, thus cutting jobs by
one-sixth.)

~~~
phire
I find the automated checkouts to be much slower than human cashiers.

Humans can optimise the path from the conveyor belt to the bag so that the
item just so happens to pass via the barcode scanner.

I could do that too, but the machine throws a hissy fit and doesn't let me
scan the next item until I've placed it in the bagging area, and waited a
second for the scales to stabilize. In the time it takes me to scan and bag
one item on the automated checkout, an experienced human cashier can get 5-6
items bagged.

And that's only if things go as expected. Sometimes the scales bug out.
Sometimes I have to navigate menus to specify what fresh produce I'm buying
(while human checkout operators have memorised all the numbers). Sometimes I
make a mistake and I'm not allowed to self-correct it. I have to wait for a
human to come along and fix my mistake.

Not to mention, the machine is yelling instructions at me the entire time.
"Yes I know I should use the pin pad to complete my transaction, in fact I did
so while you were still playing the previous audio clip."

The only time the automated checkout is faster is when there is a queue at the
real checkouts. And even then, the queue might be worth it just so I can avoid
the automated checkout yelling at me.

~~~
RugnirViking
One question I have about the automated checkouts at my local supermarket is
they seem to intentionally slow the user down. For example, if you go to pay
and put in a card, it says 'please remove your card, press the -debit card-
button, and pay with your card'

It seems like no reasonable person wouldn't notice this flaw, let alone the
presumably several people involved in creating this software, so it leads me
to believe that there is some reason the shops want to encourage not using
these checkouts.

I wonder why?

~~~
phire
It's those dreaded words: Minimal Viable Product.

------
just2n
The simple answer? Because humans are actually intelligent.

Find me someone in a job who has the exact same day at work every day with no
exceptions and I'll show you a job you can automate. Exceptions are what
define things that machines can't do well, and every scenario brought up in
this story has routine exceptions.

More importantly, even in cases perfectly suited to automation, we can't
pretend all the software we build is perfect or even remotely approaches the
quality that can be produced by the brightest minds in the industry, either.
Everyone wants to automate everything, and you can be sure most of it will be
done poorly. Even the simplest human at least does a better job than a poorly
built piece of software. I can rage 24/7 about how bad the software people
write is. At least 90% of it. I rarely find myself annoyed at how incapable of
doing their job the typical service worker is, and when I do it's virtually
always fixed by their boss or a manager.

Automation done well is a tool. It turns many jobs into a few, where people
handle exceptions and have actual administrative control. I've had tons of bad
experiences with automation that has little/no human backup and it's by far
worse than dealing with people. And this is coming from an introvert.

~~~
whyileft
Bingo. Automation is cheaper, not higher quality. The only people that
consider not talking to service agents or cashiers an improvement in service
have social anxiety issues or something similar. A checker at a grocery store
actually does all of the work for you. Objectively it is better in every way
unless you consider it a negative to be involved in human interaction.

~~~
jonknee
> The only people that consider not talking to service agents or cashiers an
> improvement in service have social anxiety issues or something similar.

Or they are in a hurry. I will take the faster option every time and that
usually means no human.

> A checker at a grocery store actually does all of the work for you.

What if there was no work to do? Amazon is exploring that concept and if it
works as described (I haven't used it yet, but have walked by and it seems to)
seems objectively better in every way.

[https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011](https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011)

~~~
whyileft
_> Or they are in a hurry. I will take the faster option every time and that
usually means no human._

Correct, but this is the result of the store intentionally routing you through
the self checkout by under staffing cashiers to save money.

 _> What if there was no work to do? Amazon is exploring that concept and if
it works as described (I haven't used it yet, but have walked by and it seems
to) seems objectively better in every way._

Excellent point. I should have used "self service" instead of "automation". It
was a poor choice of words on my part. Full automation to remove anyone from
needing to do the work would certainly be objectively better. The article
linked is more about self service than automation.

------
rabbyte
Sure, you can have bad experiences when dealing with humans. My best
experiences are with humans and my worst? Always a machine at the root of the
problem. Even the article mentions this point, that the humans were there to
soften the blow of a machine that won't print tickets unless conditions are
met. There are some jobs where people are so miserable by their meaningless,
poorly managed job that I wish they had been automated out of existence but
even where I'm agreeing with the author it's to allow the people to move more
center stage. The places we're most agitated are places that only exist
because the first time our species passed over the problem there wasn't a
better way of doing it and replicating what's been done is easier than
recommitting to the problem for a modern solution. Other agitations come where
we don't want a rigid machine-like process, such as the ticket printer, where
we want humans in control to make reasonable choices.

It's not good enough to just to get them out of the deep machinery of the
planet, it has to elevate them somewhere or we're just replacing people from
the instrumentation of the universe without good reason.

~~~
bostik
> _Always a machine at the root of the problem._

I have a perfect example of this.

Years ago, my mom's coworker discovered that her bank card no longer worked.
ATM's would error. Online systems would reject all transactions.

So she went to a bank branch to sort it out. After explaining to the teller
her situation, the teller brought up her account details, looked up from her
monitor and said, on a straight face: "You are dead."

What had happened was that she had had a full namesake who had also had an
account in the same bank. When the other person had died, and her estate had
closed the accounts, the person doing the account termination had only looked
up account owners by their full name. Closed all of them, with the explanation
"account holder deceased".

Human errors happen. So do computer errors. It only becomes a problem when
humans rely only on what computers tell them. This particular bank teller
didn't even realise that the facts stated by the computer were contradicting
what was _literally standing in front their eyes_.

Critical thinking is a dying trait.

~~~
jeandejean
Isn't it exactly a human error that you are describing? The root cause was a
distracted employee that input wrong information in the system, not the system
being flawed...

~~~
bostik
Sure, the root cause was incompetence when closing down accounts but that is
not the problem.

The real problem manifested in human blindly accepting what the computer told
them. If there is no reason, or even _NEED_ to apply critical thinking, why is
there a human involved at all? This is not an indictment of automation over
human labour. I would rather that humans are in the loop precisely because
they have the ability to spot these kinds of errors - and help to correct
them. Computers are good at repeating mundane tasks. Humans are not. We should
be making most of their distinct abilities, not molding the two into same
form.

Now, Temporal rightly pointed out that this might have been a case of
attempted fraud. But if you are trying to spot fraud, spotting anomalies and
being critical on what you accept as objective truth should be on the top of
your mental map.

------
artursapek
Great post. I hope we get over the stigma of "destroying jobs" when it comes
to ones like these that machines can easily do. Whenever I walk around the
streets of New York I can't help but think about this. Be it the miserable cab
drivers sitting in traffic staring at red lights their entire life; or guys
hauling dusty insulation out of a demolition site and throwing it into the
back of a truck while coughing up a fit; or delivery guys biking up and down
the hostile avenues of manhattan in whatever weather to deliver Chinese food.

To me it will be a great tragedy if we never end up filling these necessary
jobs with machines, be it for political reasons or something else. There's
nothing stimulating or fulfilling about these jobs. It's first world human
misery.

~~~
djrogers
> There's nothing stimulating or fulfilling about these jobs. It's first world
> human misery.

That's really nice of you to make that determination for those miserables.
They're probably so uneducated they don't even know how bad they have it. They
are lucky that's people like you can come along to take away those horrible
bill-paying, medicine buying, sources of personal satisfaction.

~~~
artursapek
You could have made the same inane argument for all the uneducated factory
laborers who have been replaced by machines. Nowhere did I suggest these
people should be broke and without health care instead. And you can't argue
with me that these people I mentioned genuinely, deep down, enjoy what they do
for a living.

~~~
mklim
>You could have made the same inane argument for all the uneducated factory
laborers who have been replaced by machines.

There's nothing inane about the argument. Have you ever been to Detroit? I've
lived there for years. It's a horrible thing for these people to have been
replaced by automation in their lifetimes. They didn't see the benefits in the
increased productivity like their employers did, they just lost their
livelihood and had to scramble for jobs that paid much less while
simultaneously trying to retrain into other fields, if they were enterprising.
The entire region is obviously devastated from the effects of it. Their prior
automated work being "unfulfilling" and therefore terrible is a) debatable and
b) nothing compared to the struggle of having no income at all. One guy I knew
ended up homeless after he lost his job, then with a leg amputation because of
frostbite from sleeping outside. When I met him he was making a living ticket
scalping in his wheelchair all day. The short term consequences are real and
terrible for these people.

~~~
Chris2048
Doesn't this just outline the terrible dependence these workers had on their
jobs? No compensation of duty of care exists from employers; any number of
things could have caused the workers to lose their jobs, they were always at
risk even when not struggling.

as an analogy: Crack addicts going through withdrawal don't conclude from
their pain that the drugs were a good thing. OP wasn't suggesting workers
should suddenly have their jobs taken away, but that the whole situation is
bad. Changing the situation, and how to do it, is an entirely different topic.

~~~
iamatworknow
Is this sarcasm of some kind or a legitimate point you're trying to make?

>Doesn't this just outline the terrible dependence these workers had on their
jobs?

You're effectively saying people shouldn't rely on their jobs to support their
livelihood. What other option do they (rather, we) have? Maybe factory workers
should have had the foresight to see the industry changing toward automation,
but even if they did, then what? Keep working to support your family 40 or
more hours per week but learn an entirely new craft on top of that? Does that
actually seem reasonable?

>any number of things could have caused the workers to lose their jobs, they
were always at risk even when not struggling.

Yes, but the _industry_ still existed. Say you worked for 10 years at Ford and
got fired. Maybe GM or Chrysler has an opportunity for you, and they'd
probably love your experience.

Does that sound familiar at all? Say you work for 10 years at Google and get
fired. Maybe Facebook or Amazon has an opportunity for you, and they'd
probably love your experience.

My point is that putting the blame on the employee shows a complete lack of
empathy for someone because they "chose the wrong path in life". Does the
employer have a duty to support the individual who became obsolete? No, but we
should all collectively have a duty to make sure the lives of these people
aren't completely destroyed, because as unlikely as it seems right now for
those of us in the software world (and I'm sure it seemed unlikely in 1995 for
those in the auto industry), we very well may be next.

~~~
Chris2048
> What other option do they (rather, we) have?

Better jobs. What options do a crack addict have? Very few. That doesn't mean
they are better off _now_ being deprived off it, they would be better off
never being dependent.

> Keep working to support your family

Why did they have a family when they were at risk? Either didn't perceive the
risk, they operated under a false sense of security; or no other options were
offered because the jobs that existed were seem as suitable.

If there were no jobs they wouldn't be inclined to settle down. I note that
turning down a job can be grounds for losing some welfare benefits.

> Maybe GM or Chrysler has an opportunity for you

speculative. In the context we are talking about there are dangerous
correlations: If one worker loses their jobs, the chance that another will
increase (due to the possibility of a common cause, in this case automation),
not to mention the chance of greater competition from other out-of-work
workers (or lower compensation).

> Maybe Facebook or Amazon

Are you still talking about bad jobs? I'd love programming/tech to be more
automated, somehow.

> putting the blame on the employee shows a complete lack of empathy for
> someone because they "chose the wrong path in life"

that's your strawman,not my argument.

> Does the employer have a duty to support the individual who became obsolete?

Do you mean at current, legally? No.

legally or morally, in the future? yes, maybe, who knows. Corporate tax pays
for some social welfare. Things won't change if you're not allowed to
criticise the current system.

> we should all collectively have a duty to make sure the lives of these
> people aren't completely destroyed

I disagree, this isn't enough. We have a duty to make sure the lives are full
of this kind of risk too, "completely destroyed" is too low a bar.

~~~
Chris2048
> the lives are full of this kind of risk

should be:

"their lives aren't full of this kind of risk"

------
freshyill
This guy frankly sounds like a monster, willing and eager to put company
profits above all else.

That said, he raises valid points. If a machine can do a better job for less
money, why shouldn't a machine do it? But he fails to mention hidden costs.
What do we do with the workers who lose their jobs to machines? Eventually
there will be no work to retrain them to do.

I can envision a future where machines build other machines and there's just a
few executives remaining at the top of some companies, collecting ever-
increasing profits as workers are eliminated.

I want to say that a universal basic income will alleviate the problem, but
are there other options? How do we live in a world where work has been mostly
eliminated?

~~~
edbaskerville
Short version: how about we just literally give everyone a job that needs one?

Long version:

As Hyman Minsky* points out, financial capitalism is inherently unstable, in
the sense of having perturbations that are big enough and frequent enough to
transform the lives of individual human beings. Our impending wave of
automation is one of those perturbations.

We're probably not going to get rid of capitalism anytime soon, and even if we
did that through violent revolution, the resulting perturbations would almost
certainly be worse. So we've got to adjust what we've got. Plus, capitalism
does have some good features.

We could literally ban robots from taking some kinds of jobs, but that's a
temporary fix, and do we honestly want people driving trucks all night, hopped
up on drugs, in order to feed their family that they never see? We should get
rid of shitty jobs where we can.

I'm not sold on universal basic income. It's really expensive, and it
eliminates one of the best features of capitalism, which is working for your
money. Working for your money gives people meaning, purpose, and a network of
human relationships, which help promote a healthy society where people feel
valuable and valued.

So how about this: universal basic employment. The government literally
guarantees everybody a job. At a living wage, for a reasonable time commitment
(less than 40 hours a week, I hope). As the capitalistic side of the economy
shrinks, government automatically creates jobs to pick up the slack.

Capitalism coupled to an adaptive socialist job-creation program.

BUT WAIT, you scream, THAT WILL JUST EXPAND FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY AND EVERYONE
WILL END UP EMPLOYED IN A SOCIALIST HELL!

Devil, details. I would argue that a related deep issue in American society is
the breakdown of our local communities. So let's kill two birds with one
stone: build an adaptive hierarchy of taxpayer-funded job creation driven from
the bottom up.

Local councils meet with their neighbors, figure out the kinds of things that
need to be done, built, whatever in their communities, match their needs with
the local unemployed talent pool. Counties monitor the local needs. States
monitor the county needs. And the feds feed money as needed and operate with a
light touch.

All these local community jobs pay the same, and it's a living wage. This
serves as a soft wage floor in place of a hard minimum wage. It's a bit like
an Americorps that pays enough to support you and your family, all the time,
for anyone that needs a job. It has a lot of features of the New Deal,
actually.

* Underappreciated economist, newly resurgent since the 2008 financial crisis. If you took some economics classes in college, you should be able to understand his writing, but he's not a great writer. I'm just barely getting familiar with standard economic terminology, so his stuff has been a really hard slog.

~~~
nfc
Agreed. A minor nitpick about "I'm not sold on universal basic income".

I'd argue that what your are proposing is both "universal" and "basic income",
it's a variation of the usually proposed UBI, that in my opinion tries to deal
with one of the main risks of such a system. A percentage of people (even if
perhaps small) just doing nothing and the moral effect of that on the rest of
the population.

I once made a comment in HN along the same lines, local community work..., it
made me smile to see in your comment something so similar to what I tried to
express, however I'm not a native speaker and the comment was probably not
clear enough.

~~~
edbaskerville
Yeah, that's true, it is a mechanism for ensuring universal basic income. It
tries to avoid the societal hazards of people not working as well as costly
subsidies to people that don't need them.

And yours made me smile. I hope some of these ideas catch on.

------
funkyy
I find this post extremely one sided. It seems that the author is too busy to
praise the machines without trying to determine the bad side of using all
automatic systems in such a sensitive place like an airport.

Imagine a hack attack or bug (it happens) that causes all terminals to stop
working for 12 hours on the airport like JFK. What would be the losses? Would
it be still worth it?

In my opinion AI should complement humans, not substitute them. The word is
not working in A and B scenarios only, there is always more options.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Imagine a hack attack or bug (it happens) that causes all terminals to stop
> working for 12 hours on the airport like JFK. What would be the losses?
> Would it be still worth it?

We already get hours-long mainframe outages, not to mention weather shutting
down airports entirely. The system survives just fine.

~~~
ccrfg
> We already get hours-long mainframe outages

I often wonder if those outages aren't sometimes caused by hackers to begin
with. Publicizing them as hacks would only serve to cause panic, and let other
hackers know how vulnerable their systems are.

------
Animats
Most POS systems aren't very good from a UI perspective. Notice the display on
a checkout stand device that takes credit cards. With "cloud-based POS", you
may see messages at the wrong time - "insert card" comes up before the system
is actually ready for the card, and may flash again during the transaction at
moments when card insertion is inappropriate. On some systems, you get past
some prompts with the touchscreen, and others with the keypad. False "chip
read error" messages are common if the card is inserted at the wrong point in
the cycle, and "wrong point" may be out of sync with the displayed messages.

Somebody probably tried to solve a real-time problem with a web client, and
the result sucks. There's certainly enough CPU power locally to do this
locally, but no, it has to be "in the cloud" now.

~~~
trome
What was the business using? Clover, Rebel, NCR? On the pinpad itself, every
vendor has limited control, and as you get into the smaller vendors, it comes
down to where they just have to take what Verifone & Ingenico provide.

------
mauvehaus
> According to the International Air Transport Association, moving to a fully
> automated check-in process could save the airline industry $1.6 billion a
> year. Which raises the question: Why haven’t we?

Because you need the people with the domain knowledge to handle the
exceptional cases anyway.

Many years ago I was flying Continental from MSP to CLE. Cleveland proceeded
to get 2 feet of snow over about 5 hours. The humans at Continental rebooked
me onto the next 3 Continental flights, and then the following 2 Northwest
flights before CLE threw in the towel for the day[0].

You don't want to expose that level of functionality to the lay person, and if
you automate it, you run the risk of creating a system so hide-bound by its
rules, it can't respond appropriately either. Just like the one that wouldn't
let the author check in 57 minutes before his flight[1].

At this point in time, humans still have the edge on having local knowledge
and the good judgment to apply it to the exceptional situations.

The real purpose of the flight attendants is to get your ass of the plane in
an emergency; serving drinks and snacks just justifies their presence the rest
of the time. Similarly check-in and gate agents are there to fix problems when
they arise, in the last 10 years or so, the ability to check you in is pretty
much secondary (modulo oversize bags, etc, which are just another example of
exceptions).

[0] We got home the next day on the first flight. I'm sure the folks in
Cleveland had a much rougher time getting to their destinations.

[1] Been there done that on an LGW to CLE flight back in the day. Also watched
my original flight board from across the concourse where I was booked on a
flight through EWR that departed a mere 10 minutes after the CLE flight.

~~~
foobarian
One time I accidentally went to the wrong airport (Newark instead of JFK). A
stern but kind lady at the checkin counter gave me a disapproving look, and
proceeded to put me on the airline's next flight (leaving about the same time
as from the other airport) without batting an eyelash. Being so used to
battling the rigid bureaucracy of international flight and US immigration, I
was floored by how flexible at least this one piece of the system turned out.

------
teknologist
I've had the opposite experience at an airport - I arrived 20 minutes before
the flight departed, so a member of staff at the desk had to call ahead and
ask if it was still physically possible for me to board. They then accompanied
me through the airport to fast-track me through security so that I could catch
my flight. They even kept the gate open for me so that I could do the awful
walk of shame into the plane, but at least I was able to take my flight and
get home for Christmas.

~~~
pilom
I believe the official policy is that you must "check in" more than an hour
before your flight. So if you check in online before going to the airport,
you're fine to arrive 20 min early.

------
cperciva
Since the author uses the example of airline travel: I almost always use the
automated kiosks -- but I want to have human agents available... because every
few years I'll do something crazy like wanting to check in for a four-segment
itinerary combining parts of three separate tickets on two different airlines.
The automated kiosks don't know how to do this, nor should they -- it's not
worth the cost of writing code (and UI) for such weird situations -- but the
humans simply ask "who the hell booked this trip" and go ahead and handle it.

The trick is to have humans available for the weird situations while not
wasting their time on routine matters; the approach some banks use, of "ATMs
are free, but there's a fee for any teller-assisted transactions which you
_could_ have done at an ATM" seems to work pretty well.

~~~
jayajay
Generating code + UI for some calculated topology of possible object/ticket
interactions?

------
paulus_magnus2
My job will be automated as soon as managers will be able to express
themselves precisely enough and will know exactly what they want.

------
PhasmaFelis
The moral of the author's "arbitrary check-in deadline" problem is the
opposite of what he thinks it is. That's a problem caused by poorly-designed
and non-overridable automation that could have been solved by giving more
power to the human attendant.

~~~
Chris2048
Yep, has nothing to do with machines. Delegations of differing levels of
authority applies to human only dynamics too; I once worked in a store were
regular shop floor staff had to repeat company policy, but management only
could override. I'd often tell customers they could not return an item due to
company policy, only for them to go to a manager and get a refund anyway - I
wasn't allowed to suggest myself they ask a manager, or allowed to suggest a
manager might override policy.

------
bambax
> _I then had the pleasure of experiencing some of these much-lauded “human
> touch points” first-hand on my travels back to NYC from abroad_

> _the clerk, who had apparently been craving some human touch points herself,
> had left her post to converse with the other clerk on the far side of the
> store. I ventured across the store to give them my money and was made to
> feel like I had barged into their private living room, demanding to be
> served_

Was "abroad" France? Sounds like it (I'm French).

Anyway, the problem with AI isn't that we'll miss the so-called, and probably
non-existent, "human touch". It's that it doesn't work.

(Examples given in the article, of vending machines and automated checkout,
don't have much to do with AI).

See translation for example. It's not that automatic translations are bad,
it's that they're incomprehensible: you couldn't guess what the text means if
your life depended on it.

In Europe, Amazon offers to translate your listing in all marketplaces'
languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian) when you create it for
just one; that produces gibberish and results in zero sales, until you use an
professional (human) translator.

Google translate, despite their recent bragging about a revolutionary update,
is no better. Small example: in French, "coup de coeur" means something you
love at first sight ("j'ai eu un coup de coeur pour cet appartement" => I fell
in love with this place at first sight). But Google translate translates "coup
de coeur" with "heart stroke"

[https://translate.google.fr/#fr/en/coup%20de%20coeur](https://translate.google.fr/#fr/en/coup%20de%20coeur)

which is beyond wrong (in no context ever can this meaning ever occur). I
noticed this because on some forum a user was describing his blogging activity
as writing about his heart strokes and I wondered how many he had had and how
it was possible to still blog about them.

Back to human interactions: machines are great when the outcome is discrete
and completely predictable; using a vending machine, buying things from
Amazon, checking in at the airport, etc.

But when some creativity is needed, machines can become super annoying;
calling customer support and finding oneself interacting with a robot makes
you want to murder someone (but there isn't anyone left to murder).

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I made my appeals up the chain of command, but it appeared the real boss —
their system — was digging its heels in on this one.

Eh, seems like the problem here was not humans, but a machine that had been
programmed in a terminally inflexible manner.

Which is what most people are worried about, when handing over control to
machines, isn't it? With a human, there is always the chance that you might be
able to negotiate some exemption from the rules, to make your life easier.
With a machine you're stuck with whatever rules are programmed to it (or it
has learned etc). Even the best adaptive systems we have available are not
very flexible, unfortunately.

This is really a huge problem that's not going to be solved by sneering at the
older generation who "need to ask their grandchildren what a tweet is" 'cause
they just don't get it etc. I mean, maybe let's pause here and remember we'll
all grow old too, one day, right? If we keep making machines that need a young
person's familiarity with technology to operate correctly, we'll never get
systems that make everyone's life easier.

------
yellowapple
As a counterpoint, I rather dislike self-checkout at grocery stores. It
invariably ends up being a fight between "place item in bagging area" and
"remove unknown item from bagging area".

No, you damn robot, I just want to use my goddamn cart. Please shut the
everloving-hell up about it instead of making me fumble for some "skip
bagging" button on a shitty resistive touchscreen that doesn't register half
the time.

The only reason I bother with them is because the lines are shorter.
Otherwise, I'd rather just go to a regular checkout line, with a checker who's
way better at scanning items than I am and (depending on the store) a bagger
who's way better at bagging than I am.

------
Spooky23
The human in the story couldn't fix the authors boarding pass issue because
management limited the discretion available.

Customer service is all about flexibility and resolving problems. That means
giving humans discretion to act.

That manifests in different ways. One night I was stuck working until the wee
hours and walked into my hotel (a Hampton Inn, not a posh place), checked in
and headed up to my room. I hadn't eaten, was soaked by the driving rain and
was generally miserable.

The night auditor sent a maintenance guy up with extra towels, a frozen TV
dinner and some sleepy time tea. That isn't a full service hotel, and she
didn't need to do anything. But she did.

People hate arbritary rules. When Target treated people returning things like
criminals, they angered lots of people and lost customers. Meanwhile Walmart
is pretty hassle free, employees can only say "no" in specific circumstances.

Self checkouts for grocery have been around for a decade. But they rarely take
over -- there's a reason.

------
mschuster91
> An experiment at McDonald’s found that customers using self-service kiosks
> were more likely to supersize their orders, resulting in an average increase
> of $0.30 per order. It appears customers ordering from a human were more
> self-conscious of the employee’s judgment, which I found shocking.

I like and use the self-service points at McDonalds mostly to avoid:

1) groups of school kids who can't decide who pays for what/who wants
what/must order as a group and dealing with the money distribution... when
there's a 12-people-line behind them

2) Language barriers: Let's just say that (in Germany, at least) fluent German
is not always a job requirement. Or fluent English - especially bad on
fastfood shops in train stations.

3) when ordering for groups, it's easier to be able to directly type in what
you want instead of hoping that the cashier correctly gets what you want (see
#2)

While those refusing to order on a self-service station still are in the line
and wait, I'm happily munching burgers.

------
falsedan
There's one situation where I want a human checkout experience rather than a
machine: when I have a stroller with a sleeping infant and bags strewn about
its basket and the shopping precariously balanced on the hood because I didn't
see where the shopping baskets were when we entered and a pre-schooler whining
that we didn't pick up the magazine they _really_ wanted.

In that situation, I really want someone else's help with scanning, paying
for, and bagging everything. I imagine people with permanent impediments would
also prefer human help.

Doesn't the authors argument go the other way: make labour cheap enough (with
a guaranteed minimum income) that every patron can have a dedicated shopping
assistant & the business can save money on expensive software and inflexible
machines?

------
tominous
I love the way you write, very entertaining.

As a consumer, as long as there is one good self-service option I'm happy.
When I'm in the car with two kids and need to get petrol, I'll drive the extra
distance to pay at the pump rather than having to go into the store.

I don't think all companies need to go down this route. There's value in
segmentation for those customers who can't or won't embrace technology. Take
the recent OECD survey on computer skills [1]: only a third of people can
complete medium-complexity tasks.

[1] [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-
levels/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/)

~~~
Mathnerd314
> I'll drive the extra distance to pay at the pump

Another data point is New Jersey, where gas attendants are required:
[http://mentalfloss.com/article/74549/why-cant-you-pump-
your-...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/74549/why-cant-you-pump-your-own-gas-
new-jersey)

~~~
douche
New Jersey is the worst. I always have to remember to fill up before I cross
state lines into that place, so I don't have to deal with people yelling at me
if I absent-mindedly jump out and start gassing up.

Also, one very minor gas station-related automation point: if you run a gas
station, and take the clip out of the pump nozzle, so that your customers are
forced to stand there and squeeze the trigger the whole time they are fueling,
rather than setting it and letting it click off when the tank is full, you
should burn in hell.

~~~
striking
I wonder if you couldn't make your own 3D printed replacement for that. Just a
little piece of ABS that would get dislodged when your car is full.

~~~
douche
There's already a shutoff in the nozzle that prevents overfilling when the
level in the tank reaches the end of the nozzle, at least on any pump I've
used in the past decade.

A Leatherman is just about the right size to jam in there and hold the trigger
open if the metal clip has been removed.

------
ZeroGravitas
This article is mostly from a service job viewpoint, but I regularly have the
same thought about factory type jobs. More and more I see things being sold as
"hand-made" and I nearly always think to myself that that's a negative
attribute. Why would I want something more expensive and less consitently
made?

I recently watched a TV show in which someone toured a factory that made
crisps (potato chips). At one point they were frying in a fryer roughly the
size of a childs paddling pool. Someone with a rake (I believe it was a
standard garden rake) stood beside it and occasionally stirred. They stated
this was what let them put "hand made" on their packaging.

------
derekp7
To add a data point regarding self checkouts (I'm wondering if anyone else
experiences this). Often when I'm waiting for a human checkout, I'll see the
snacks and drinks, and throw one on the belt. But when I go to the self
checkout I'm so involved with "a job to do" (that is, doing the job of a
checkout clerk), that I've never considered adding a candy bar to my purchase.
It is only after I've completed and paid, that I think "Gee, I really could
have used a Snickers". But then it is too late, I've already paid and there is
someone behind me waiting to use that checkout machine.

~~~
jayajay
That's just bad design. The self-checkout could easily prompt a few questions
before you check out, based on what you scanned.

"Hey, you got milk. Why not add a 4 pack of Oreos for 5% off? They are right
behind you!"

~~~
amiga-workbench
That would be incredibly irritating. Just like when a fleshy cashier does
it...

------
dilemma
Computers should be seen as turbocharged bureaucracies. They're great for
simple, repeatable, and well-defined tasks. Once you venture past that,
however, everything breaks down and refuses to work.

------
tomohawk
It's sad that the author resorts to blaming old people for the lack of
adoption. As if the only possible explanation could be that there is a defect
in the people making the decisions.

------
h4nkoslo
Left out of these discussions of the joys of automated checkouts is that the
illiterate and/or obstinate population makes up a large segment of consumers
in certain areas. McDonalds has enough difficulty training their _staff_ to
use the checkout machines in particular areas that you do not want to see what
happens if you throw the lunch rush to their own devices. Interfacing with
such machines is a skill like any other and people like the author
dramatically overestimate how common it is.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
McDonalds have actually started rolling this out in some locations. A giant
wall mounted iPad type deal to order meals through.

Here's a burger blogger with a video review of him trying one out:
[http://burgerlad.com/2015/02/mcdonalds-touch-screen-
ordering...](http://burgerlad.com/2015/02/mcdonalds-touch-screen-
ordering.html)

------
Shivetya
I like the solution employed by many Grocery stores and some big box stores.
lines for both solutions, whether at check out or elsewhere within the store.

there is room for both because the capabilities of people varies and some do
need assistance. if the unmanned position is not being used frequently or has
complaints then business needs to jump on it quickly to make people understand
it will work and work well but at teh same time, keep a few people to humanize
the area

------
darod
Bill Burr sums up perfectly why some people hate self checkout. Additionally
when companies implement these systems customers tend to get less service and
with none of the savings passed on to them.

Check the video, it's very hilarious.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w)

------
_nalply
It's interesting that so many people are so opposed to automating jobs. When I
checked out my groceries myself, a neighbour also did the same. I said: «Hello
are you also trying out new things?» and she seemed embarrassed. A week later
she returned to the traditional way of buying groceries.

------
gagabity
I always wonder how come crab fishing cant be mostly automated whenever I
watch one of those Discovery shows, surely the most dangerous bits can be done
by machines by now, or is it a job protection thing?

------
JoeAltmaier
Never heard of this deadline before. I've never arrived an hour early to a
flight in my life. Is this a real thing?

------
Markoff
systems are not perfect and prepared for all scenarios, when i tried to choose
row for infants in airplane their system didn't let me to choose it, only
human at check in could do it for me

truth they could fix their system, but there are other rare scenarios not
worth implementing

------
petra
Interesting idea. But how does that one gets implemented among all the noise ?

------
sigmaprimus
After reading this article, because of the tone it was written with I think it
would be easy to dismiss the authors entire premis of replacing customer
service agents with AI to improve efficiency and cut costs as a cold,
heartless rant from an elitist that doesnt understand or worse even care about
how important those jobs are to maintaining our social fabric... but I won't,
the fact is those jobs are being handled by machines right now and the author
is somewhat correct, the bad employees need to be replaced but there are valid
reasons why people are used instead of machines and I will try my best to give
a few of them to address the authors points. Here goes.. Airports are very
stressful for a certain amount of people, these people tend to get upset when
say, they arrive late for a flight check in, it is much better for that person
to be able to vent their frustrations towards a trained rep than another
passenger without the social skills and training to de escalate a situation,
who most likely is also upset as this would most likely result in further
problems requiring police, courts, prisons etc. Airline reps also however
little it may seem are an athority figure and as such require passengers to
treat them with certain level of decorum either by law or just social
convention which tends to make othe rise unruly travelers toe the line.
AIrvine reps are much more effective at moving people along than you may
realize. There is a reason why during big events the police are called out to
direct traffic and pedestrians instead of relying on the light controllers
with all of their algorithms and that is because things run smoother, granted
the example of an empty airport may not support that argument but all airports
get busy and you cannot expect people to be available only when things get
busy. (well you can but then you get bad workers) When it comes to customs
agents, I agree that being questioned is annoying and can make you feel like
they are searching for a reason to arrest you, but that is their purpose and
the fact that you felt that way is actually a good thing, yes scanning a
passport is much better for the travelers but not necessarily better for
everyone, just as swiping your drivers license into a kiosk might be better
for the majority of people going through a drunk driver checkstop it would
defeat the whole purpose. The cashier that was too busy talking to their co
worker to serve you should be fired. But there are vending machines in
airports for everything now, they do tend to breakdown, get vandalized, run
out of product. Yes you can solve these problems and as I said there are
machines already doing this. Finaly the McDonald's example, yes people do tend
to up size their orders at kiosks just like how slot machines tend to
encourage people to keep gambling, as a matter of fact though there was a
certain movie called Super Size Me that attacked McDonald's for exactly what
you see as a virtue but that is another argument all together. I live in an
area that has McDonald's with these kiosks and they provide a value added
service called create your own burger which allows you to mix and match
McDonald's products together to create hybrid burgers like a quaternary
pounder fillet o mac!! but again for some reason they do not accept cash and
considering many of mcdonald's customers either prefer or are forced to use
cash due to their financial situations there are still problems that need to
be solved. In conclusion I tend to agree that there are many benefits to
automation and computer services, I myself use the self checkouts at my local
grocery store but that does not mean that we can discount the benifits of real
people, both systems have value and smart companies realize this and as such
use both, choice is always better.

------
chrismealy
Is there a machine that can help the author get to the point?

~~~
flukus
Yes, there are some good reddit bots that can automatically summarize an
article quite well.

~~~
splendidHaiku
These machines will only help readers after the article is finished.
chrismealy however was asking for a machine helping the writer while the
article is in writing. But I also think the question was meant a little
sarcastic.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
No, the author could run the summarise-bot, then use the results to focus the
writing towards the salient points.

Sarcasm was certainly intended.

