This post is a compiled snippet from a Twitter thread that I've transported over here for posterity. The original thread started here: https://twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1332375490988974080

In fact, many of these roles are being automated, but automation does not free people in our world.
Many of the people working these jobs do so because they need income to cover for their basic needs as well as for things like caring for loved ones, pursuing education, and more.

They aren’t doing the work for fun or just because they want to help out Amazon. They’re doing it because they need work.
Automating the work often can decrease the incomes and working conditions of people because companies view the workers as more dispensable.

When work is automated, the workers do not see the benefits of that automation (except sometimes in the “consumer surplus” of cheaper products or things like faster shipping). The benefits go to the owners of the robots/automated systems, the owners of the capital.

That said: it doesn’t have to be like this! That’s just what we tend to see.
I’m so glad you asked because it’s a good point: can’t automation actually be a good thing that liberates people? It can!
But liberation isn’t the default impact of automation. It’s often the opposite.

There are some very brilliant folks I’ve had the pleasure of working with to explore this question: how can we design technology to increase shared prosperity rather than further concentrating power?
www.partnershiponai.org/shared-prosperity-initiative

I also appreciate this piece challenging the notion that people want all their repetitive, simple tasks to be automated in favor of the “creative, challenging” work

I myself am guilty of espousing that kind of thinking, & I’ve been grateful for this view
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/artificial-intelligence-will-make-your-job-even-harder/597625

It’s also true that automation may not necessarily remove work, but transform, hide, & alienate it.
@marylgray describes “the paradox of automation’s last mile” in recognition of the work of training, double-checking, & managing edge-cases for automation.
ghostwork.info/2019/01/paradox-of-automations-last-mile

Another take on this is @astradisastra’s fabulously coined “fauxtomation” where the introduction of a machine provides the illusion of automation while truly shifting the work from paid to unpaid labor or (maybe more perniciously) unpaid to devalued labor
logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade

But CAN automation be liberating?
I actually got to chat with those warehouse workers about automation & the technology used, & what they kept talking about wasn’t the technology at all. It was the policies! The issue isn’t the machines but what we do with the power they bring.

I’m so grateful to get to learn from the disability activism community on here, and one of the things I’ve seen is that technologies CAN make things easier, cheaper, and more accessible for folks in a variety of ways. Technology can be empowering.

But “nothing about us without us” applies as much to policy and representation in media as it does the design and development of products and technologies. @elizejackson coined #disabilitydongle to refer to the many useless “innovations” purportedly created for disabled people.

“Disability dongles put the onus on disabled people
Disability dongles are not substitutes for access; instead, they are another barrier to full equity and inclusion.”
www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/30/18523006/disabled-wheelchair-access-ramps-stair-climbing

Relatedly, technological innovation aimed at eliminating the “tedious” or “unpleasant” work is most often not designed WITH workers as an adaptive tool, but rather by companies that have other priorities and often regard workers to as a necessary evil and barrier to efficiency

As @sesmith writes in the Vox article on pointless new gadgets, “Most frustrating is that disability dongles put the burden on the end user — the disabled person — rather than the people creating inaccessible conditions.”
www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/30/18523006/disabled-wheelchair-access-ramps-stair-climbing

Similarly, the myth of automation “freeing people to do things they like” suggests an intervention that may be misaligned with the problem.
I have had a lot of similar thinking (and I still think that automation CAN be powerful and liberating, but it isn’t the actual issue). twitter.com/jhakistone/status/1332374787969212417

The actual issue isn’t that there’s too much work to be done and people are needed to do it. There are too many people who need work because we’ve configured our societies in a way that do not support “freeing people to do things that they like.” Rather; they make work necessary.

This is this is why I spoke to the choices that companies like Amazon make re: the working conditions of their staff
They actually DO have the technology to greatly reduce the strain on workers and could continue to pay them well to work safely, but instead they squeeze them more twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1332372565205995523

It’s also quite possible that empowering and valuing workers would actually lead to greater innovations, just as the ramps that disabled activists fought for had benefits to people through so many different uses
ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect

As “disability dongles put the burden on the end user—the disabled person—rather than the people creating inaccessible conditions,” the way automation is being developed puts the burden of adjusting to disruptive tech on those least resources to bear it.
www.partnershiponai.org/shared-prosperity-initiative

I still personally hold a lot of optimism about technology and its potential to produce greater shared prosperity & more freedom for people to do what they want to, but we’re wielding a great power that can be a force of evil perhaps even more easily than it can a force for good.

We cannot count on automation to be a liberating power. We cannot accept its consequences as necessary evils. We can’t just assume that technology will bring greater equality and shared prosperity. We must challenge and question and fight to ensure it.