Published: 12 February 2024, PDF available, 43 pages
Robots are predictable
Robots don’t judge you.
(Although, to be possibly pedantic, they can judge you, or be unpredictable, if they are programmed that way. Still, I usually prefer to go through the self-checkout at the grocery store.)
Would not mind self-checkout if they accepted cash. Although a cashier is not a big deal either, not like they talk with you aside from “do you have a discount card?” or “do you need a bag?”
Same for the self checkout.
Oh definitely, some are designed horribly.
I can imagine.
I support automation of the service industry, but I worry about the future of everyone when everyone is constantly going about their day with no real interaction.
The reason I support self checkout is because a small number of employees can oversee a large number of machines. It’s bad for people who are going to end up with extreme social anxiety because they were allowed to go for long periods of time without real interaction.
Is forced social interaction the answer to this though?
Not having any social interaction would be likely to make it a lot harder.
As much as I think automation is progress, a future where people can go get stuff with no human interaction at all will likely end badly for the people who are already on the edge.
WFH is good for a lot of people and has practical advantages, but it will likely be incredibly bad for people who are already struggling.
I don’t like this article, it’s too negative. It’s got the whole “dysfunction rather than difference” attitude. I fear that they just want to pawn us off on robots so they don’t have to deal with us, although it does talk about using robots to “cure” us. I prefer the idea of it being two groups of people with different communication styles that both need to learn how to better communicate with each other. Most people are already bad enough with communicating with others, so I think everyone would benefit from this.
Well said.
We’re also not a fucking monolith, and while I appreciate some autists would find it easier or more comfortable communicating with a robot, I find it anything from frustrating to enraging when I’m forced to (like customer service) and would never choose to communicate with one over a human, ever.
Sure, NT’s can be frustrating and enraging to deal with too, but at least when you get frustrated or enraged, they understand what frustration and rage are (even if not why you’re feeling them).This definitely reeks of an attempt to get NT’s out of having to make any effort at inclusion.
(E: word)I think something important about this is that I sometimes phrase something poorly on a first attempt. With a robot, you can tell it to ignore the original massage and rephrase it until you make your point accurately.
With people, once you say something, they will attach that context no matter what even if you need to retry again a couple times to get the right point across.
I didn’t have this realization until the Edit option in modern chat AIs.
Robots don’t get hurt or offended or stop talking to you and refuse to tell you why.
I, for one, welcome my new robotic overlords.
deleted by creator
Given the deeply adversarial relationship I have with any GPT I’ve used, I doubt this.
but I don’t want robots to be a thing. And I don’t want autistic people to be viewed as some kind of tool for the billionaires to get richer
A lot of shitty video game companies and other billion dollar corpos are looking for autistic people to hire because they’re less likely to complain about not getting a good wage or about working extortionary long hours under threat of being fired.
I don’t care what your race, gender, disability or whatever is. the minimum wage should be higher than the cost of living and everyone deserves an equal piece of the profits of a company they work for on top of getting a living wage and benefits. For the executives that contribute nothing, that means a lot less money, for the people who actually work at the company, that means a lot more.
If you devote your time to the operation of a business, you deserve to be paid and to be paid well.
Any company that wants to take advantage of autistic people not being informed about their rights as a worker should be broken up and the executives should be put in stockades in a public square.
As a theoretical religious communist, I have a counterpoint. An independent livable wage would be too high for many jobs and would ultimately lead to the elimination of those jobs. While that might sound good, I’ve had autistic people tell me that retail is the only thing they can do.
I feel like a lot of people should be getting paid and treated better then they are, but then there are redditors who think that fast food employees should be getting paid $30 per hour.
Hypothetically, if fast food employees had to be paid $30 per hour, the first thing that would happen is prices would go up. Then large numbers of employees would be fired. The employees who remain would be the absolute minimum necessary to do the job and they would end up extremely overworked. They would also be expected to be on call to come in at any moment during their time off and they’d likely be on an extremely strict attendance policy since not showing up could mean the restaurant has to close down.
