Why replacing humans with robots will never work

Whether it’s self driving trains or touchscreens in McDonald’s, when a worker is demanding better pay and conditions suddenly everyone loves technology, writes Phil McDuff

The robots might be able to take over in the farms and mines, but ironically the farm and mine owners would no longer have any customers to sell to (PA Media)

Whenever we get strikes, a peculiar thing happens. People who, the rest of the year, can be found Googling “how do I open pdf” suddenly become techno-optimist futurists. Whether it’s self driving trains or touchscreens in McDonald’s, when a worker is demanding better pay and conditions, suddenly everyone loves technology.

Those techno-scabs tend to fall into two camps. The majority are simply wide-eyed naïfs who think technology is magic, who believe that if you hit an icon on your magic phone that your finger itself summons the Uber. These are people who neither know about nor care to understand the massively expensive technical infrastructure that underlies modern automation; or, for that matter, the highly paid technical staff who are required to keep it running.

Then there are those who do understand that automation is not a free lunch, who know it’s expensive and complicated and comes with its own set of trade offs, but who run entirely on spite and are prepared to pay any amount of money in order to not let workers win. They understand well that strikes are a conflict over power in the workplace, and what’s important to them is retaining the power to dictate terms and conditions to workers.