this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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[–] bluemoon@piefed.social 14 points 6 days ago

higher ups are scared of workers power.

[–] Lugh 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

This expands the range of 'Work From Home' to include physical labor. Humanoid robots aren't far off the point (2030s?) where they can do most unskilled labor. With telepresence, they can take those jobs sooner.

This also brings something else closer. The looming crisis over what our governing economic model will be when human labor can no longer compete for wages with AI & robots.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think it's pretty clear, there is no plan for the masses put out of work by robots. Capitalism is about More Money Now™, not what happens tomorrow. The fact that robots don't buy products seems irrelevant to those who want to deploy robots because they don't have to pay robots, and robots can't complain, or sue the company, or take vacations, or go on strike, etc.

People want ethical slaves. That's where robots come in. It's why we want anthropomorphic robots, even when task specific form factors make more sense in most cases. We make the excuse that they need to be anthropomorphic to work within our existing world, which is built for humans, but I don't think that's the whole story, or even the main reason.

Although, the filthy rich have no problem at all using human slaves, they do it wherever they can get away with it. We are, once again, allowing the filthy rich too much power. We remind them that the alternative to striking was hanging them, and now they're telling us that the alternative to slavery will be robots. I suspect they believe we'd be better off as slaves, since at least slaves are fed and housed, as if there were only two options.

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 4 points 6 days ago

Thats when we have riots

[–] nagaram@startrek.website 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The video attached is hilarious because the human worker is a hundred times more efficient.

[–] ook@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 days ago

Well, yes and no. The robot is slower, but can also work without a break. You couldn't keep a human the whole hours the store is open back there. So just a question if the robot is fast enough to do the work a human would do in the same time.

I am more wondering about the manual intervention. The video says "in rare cases" but who knows what thats supposed to mean. If the operator has to take over as much as a normal human would work there and is that slow, this would be ridiculous.

[–] 100@fedia.io 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

seems like a good place to ban employers doing this to protect local jobs (foreigners remoting to do physical jobs with robots for 10% of the cost and probably dodging labour laws)

[–] overat8@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think it’s unavoidable due to the fact Japan has a declining birth rates and because of that, there isn’t enough young people to fill these entry job roles.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 points 6 days ago

AF: Actually Filipino.

[–] GooseGang@beehaw.org 1 points 6 days ago

Could this potentially lead to an increasing benefit of destabilizing governments in other countries to keep the cost of labor low?