I spent a lot of time and effort deploying automation in customer service. The idea was to do it in ways that were really valuable, as opposed to spreadsheet positive. Our management had been toasted too many times by folks selling snake oil, but my god savings were needed.
They just had to be real...
So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is intense.
Second issue: automation generates work. Yup. When your service workers get time they use it to address difficult cases and to do the work that removes regulatory and safety risks. The rest of the time this stuff is ignored, building hidden risk for the enterprise. Relieve the pressure, and it reemerges.
Third issue: peak demands. Ideally automation would help you deal with peak demands enabling human staffing at sensible levels to handle most of the traffic most of the time. Sadly it doesn't. Peak demand often seemed to be for the work that could least be automated.
Forth issue: the tech is a castle of lies. Ok, that's not quite true... but there is a lot of lying. In the academic work the lying is of the form of what is left out of the experiments and evaluations - for example that the algorithm cost $100k to run or something. In the commercial world there is flat out lying - HAL I look at you, you bastard. How many RFI's were derailed by some regional President at a supplier ringing my CIO or CEO and explaining that I was "a problem" and had "an attitude"... well, all of them. The issue is that there is no sanction. HAL is still pushing Holmes and winning contracts, and not delivering what they promise, because it's all a lie. All that happens is that they move to the next sucker and wait for management churn at the old sucker to erase the corporate memory, and this does not take long. In reality they should all be drummed out of the business and no one should ever speak to them again.
But, five years later I am still flogging my guts out and they are all on their boats and golf courses. One of the bastards had his own vineyard.
How many RFI's were derailed by some regional President at a supplier ringing my CIO or CEO and explaining that I was "a problem" and had "an attitude"
I had issues with this too. The only solution is to prep your CIO whenever you play hardball, and return the favor to the vendor.
For customer service I find that the real automation "gains" tend either to be in debugging the rest of the organization or in driving a customer to give up on finding a human to talk to.
Automation is capital intensive to set up, so it may take years for it to pay for itself. This delays adoption considerably for smaller businesses. Hair cutting is one of those jobs that resists automation. Same for burger flipping. It's not as if salons and restaurants can afford expensive robots to automate those tasks. Customer support automation may mean lost business due to angry customers.
It occurs to me that buying a robot arm to literally flip burgers is highly anthropomorphizing the solution space. You want a machine that gives you a burger at the end. This is a pretty easy thing to automate if you had a huge, constant demand for burgers at one single location using standard factory automation strategies. Might not be feasible at all for the typical franchises with spikey demand and relatively low volume.
I say we increase the minimum wage to about $20/hour, adjusted for productivity growth (per capita GDP) since the 1960s and see what happens.
Burger assembling may resist, but I know of at least two burger chains that use conveyor charbroilers where you put the patties in on one end and they come out nicely cooked on the other. I don't think those have a large capital cost either.
McDonald's is always inovating on labor reduction. They've got robots pouring drinks now, but they also used to have the size buttons to dispense a specific amount of soda which reduced labor. When you add up enough savings, you can run the restaurant with one less person; which is handy.
Still the best solution is to combine robotics with humans. Humans are still infinitely flexible and much easier to dispose off than an expensive robot /sarcasm.
There is definatley something here in terms of using human intelligence to control physical actions, perhaps as a prelude to full automation for a given task.
It also opens up interesting questions as to the future of the labour markets around the world where somebody in one country can control the unit of production in another, I mean we are comfortable with software outsourcing so perhaps this is not such a reach.
In my experience, the best bits of automation are those set up by the people doing the tasks, once given autonomy (heh) to do it themselves.
Then, of course, they get promoted, the tech becomes a "product" and they try to push it on other departments, but the original grassroots efforts by software engineers doing things other than software engineering (e.g., operating spacecraft) is solid gold.
>I have not seen good examples of companies successfully deploying robotic systems in low-margin, public-facing settings.
— Matt Beane, University of California, Santa Barbara
Me neither, which has kept me at the opposite end of the spectrum for decades.
To this day, good apps linger where it's still cheaper to use a human operator.
Going to build me a robot anyway, as soon as it's complete it'll be doing an invoiceable job.
That's a key.
So it starts making money right away, admittedly not as much as having a human performing its tasks.
Human's going to have to fill in when the robot is down anyway, plus serve the robot instead at intervals when it is running, just to keep it fully supplied and maintained.
So it's going to require a higher-skilled human than before.
That won't be cheap but I can then sell the higher skilled output for a better premium to clients most interested in the robot.
Ok for the cases where they found the robots weren't flexible enough. But the "people are cheaper anyway" that they add on nearly every anecdote isn't reassuring at all.
What do you expect to be better in 30 years? We have NOW insane computing power, cool stuff like insane size FPGAs and super fast GPUs. Mechanical parts work with fraction of micron accuracy. And yet we have millions of workers picking simple shaped objects manually every day around the world.
Strangely enough a former co worker at the Angelika is now doing video archives. In a local interview they asked him the most interesting thing he’s found so far. His response:
“You’d be surprised to see we’re still debating and arguing over the same issues we had in the 60s, 70z, 80s…”
Basically same shit different generation - so far.
I think they are being held back by trying to make them human-like. I doubt that people will find plastic attractive. instead they should be focusing on sensation
sgt101|3 years ago
They just had to be real...
So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is intense.
Second issue: automation generates work. Yup. When your service workers get time they use it to address difficult cases and to do the work that removes regulatory and safety risks. The rest of the time this stuff is ignored, building hidden risk for the enterprise. Relieve the pressure, and it reemerges.
Third issue: peak demands. Ideally automation would help you deal with peak demands enabling human staffing at sensible levels to handle most of the traffic most of the time. Sadly it doesn't. Peak demand often seemed to be for the work that could least be automated.
Forth issue: the tech is a castle of lies. Ok, that's not quite true... but there is a lot of lying. In the academic work the lying is of the form of what is left out of the experiments and evaluations - for example that the algorithm cost $100k to run or something. In the commercial world there is flat out lying - HAL I look at you, you bastard. How many RFI's were derailed by some regional President at a supplier ringing my CIO or CEO and explaining that I was "a problem" and had "an attitude"... well, all of them. The issue is that there is no sanction. HAL is still pushing Holmes and winning contracts, and not delivering what they promise, because it's all a lie. All that happens is that they move to the next sucker and wait for management churn at the old sucker to erase the corporate memory, and this does not take long. In reality they should all be drummed out of the business and no one should ever speak to them again.
But, five years later I am still flogging my guts out and they are all on their boats and golf courses. One of the bastards had his own vineyard.
So, sigh
mathattack|3 years ago
I had issues with this too. The only solution is to prep your CIO whenever you play hardball, and return the favor to the vendor.
pydry|3 years ago
joenot443|3 years ago
> algorithm costs $100k to run
I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??
paulpauper|3 years ago
elevaet|3 years ago
Robotbeat|3 years ago
I say we increase the minimum wage to about $20/hour, adjusted for productivity growth (per capita GDP) since the 1960s and see what happens.
toast0|3 years ago
Burger assembling may resist, but I know of at least two burger chains that use conveyor charbroilers where you put the patties in on one end and they come out nicely cooked on the other. I don't think those have a large capital cost either.
McDonald's is always inovating on labor reduction. They've got robots pouring drinks now, but they also used to have the size buttons to dispense a specific amount of soda which reduced labor. When you add up enough savings, you can run the restaurant with one less person; which is handy.
oxfordmale|3 years ago
sph|3 years ago
throwayyy479087|3 years ago
monkeydust|3 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyIVGB8OOk
There is definatley something here in terms of using human intelligence to control physical actions, perhaps as a prelude to full automation for a given task.
It also opens up interesting questions as to the future of the labour markets around the world where somebody in one country can control the unit of production in another, I mean we are comfortable with software outsourcing so perhaps this is not such a reach.
jvanderbot|3 years ago
Then, of course, they get promoted, the tech becomes a "product" and they try to push it on other departments, but the original grassroots efforts by software engineers doing things other than software engineering (e.g., operating spacecraft) is solid gold.
fuzzfactor|3 years ago
Me neither, which has kept me at the opposite end of the spectrum for decades.
To this day, good apps linger where it's still cheaper to use a human operator.
Going to build me a robot anyway, as soon as it's complete it'll be doing an invoiceable job.
That's a key.
So it starts making money right away, admittedly not as much as having a human performing its tasks.
Human's going to have to fill in when the robot is down anyway, plus serve the robot instead at intervals when it is running, just to keep it fully supplied and maintained.
So it's going to require a higher-skilled human than before.
That won't be cheap but I can then sell the higher skilled output for a better premium to clients most interested in the robot.
TrinaryWorksToo|3 years ago
marcosdumay|3 years ago
mathattack|3 years ago
pcurve|3 years ago
I'm sure things will look very different 20-30 years from now.
lnsru|3 years ago
6stringmerc|3 years ago
“You’d be surprised to see we’re still debating and arguing over the same issues we had in the 60s, 70z, 80s…”
Basically same shit different generation - so far.
robg|3 years ago
iso1631|3 years ago
seydor|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
astrange|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
EGreg|3 years ago
Do they even come close to what humans can do?
seydor|3 years ago
bpodgursky|3 years ago
If you keep your blinders on an focus on what you predict automation will look like, you will miss the world reshaping itself around you.
6stringmerc|3 years ago
Nobody admits to loving their Cherry 2000.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
frozenport|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
black_13|3 years ago
[deleted]
zackees|3 years ago
[deleted]