In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

TiaMane

Robot war will be cinematic, will probably safe lives

Simulacra

The article seems to say that it's not jobs nobody wants, but rather a labor shortage from an aging population. Japan just seems to be running out of people for its labor market.

maerF0x0

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unemployment rate, i'm talking about labor non-participation rate as a measure of people who could be enticed into the workforce with a living wage)

mamami

Meanwhile in the US they're replacing artists, writers, and teachers

eucryphia

The job no one wants? Grunting out 2.6 babies before you’re 35. Who’s paying for your nursing home? Tax the robot’s income? Will your demographic replacements vote for that?

Apreche

It’s amazing to use technology to save humans from toil. The question is, who owns the robot? Who benefits from the labor it produces? The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure. But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation. Labor expenditures and taxes are the only times the wealthy have to share their wealth with the rest of us. If they succeed in disintermediating labor, and governments fail to tax them, the oligarchs will live a life of unlimited luxury while the rest of us die in poverty.

7373737373

If Universal Basic Income was a thing, this would probably happen much faster globally

msla

They're coming for the jobs immigrants would be taking if the Japanese government weren't so xenophobic.

canpan

I went to a chain Family Restaurant recently here in Japan. The food is brought by a robot for a while now. Recently you get your seat selected at a touchscreen. You can pay at your table's tablet using PayPay. There is still some waiter staff, but it being reduced to the past. The only part that did not change much yet is the kitchen. I said to myself to stop going, if there is no human staff left. On the other hand, small shops with good atmosphere are thriving.

01100011

Japan is in a demographic decline. They need all the robots they can get.

fhn

just like nobody in the US is qualified to work in tech so companies have to outsource jobs?

xvxvx

The idea that automation, AI, offshoring, and low-paid migrant workers are filling jobs no one wants is pure evil bullshit. The main goal of business is to generate the most income with the least expense, labor being the most cost for the most part. We're downstream from indentured servitude and literal slavery, and probably one bad event away from going back.

sharadov

Rather than encouraging immigration they come up with this.

stephc_int13

I think that many signs are indicating that Japan will re-emerge as a major technology powerhouse in the coming decades. And being confronted early to demographic transformation will end-up being an advantage. On the opposite side I think that immigration is a temporary band-aid that doesn’t solve any of the structural issues.

tamimio

Cobotics (robots doing trivial stuff that helps human and assist them rather than “replacing” them) has been a thing for decades, that’s not the issue here, the issue is corporate greed that are using robots or AI as a scapegoat to blame your low wages and/or fire you. If the job market is more regulated, you will those excuses vanishing quickly.

eqvinox

"Physical AI"? I must've missed the last terminology update patch… (I can see what it's trying to say, but… my brain just refuses this one. AI is a concept, which… just, no.)