I lost my last job because I resigned which is unusual as I normally say stick your job up your clacker.

Worse... lawyers.

The reason they keep doing this is not to save money but to hoard money, it is greed pure and simple. When CEOs and boards made 10's times the lowest employee we had a thriving economy. Now a days they make 1000's times the lowest paid employee they they have not given a raise in 10 years and then complain when wages go up a fraction. They already raised prices and their cost has stayed relatively the same. Where does all the extra fund go? It goes into their pockets and to the politicians that they buy off so they can swindle even more money from the workers and then convince everyone that they are losers and nothing more than moochers because they want to make more money.

Could say more but ...... you get the idea.

The matter as seen from China:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/1949918/rise-robots-60000-workers-culled-just-one-factory-chinas

Isn't this an old problem going back to the first steam engines?
I mean it's not even fun to read that the former low cost countries like China now start to close their factories and
produce in countries with even less costs and labor rights.
Observing my country I can see the pattern. More and more restriction of labor rights, families that can't survive
even with full time jobs, and a small minority getting richer and richer.
And than they are surprised that the crowds following the pied piper with their simple solutions.

So it's not the automation I'm complaining about. With the exception of the self serving gas station, pretty much everything you mentioned fills a consumer want or need. However I think we need to keep in mind that in each of those examples, no one was really replaced. Gas stations still have their attendants, banks still have their tellers, and GOG has customer support. In some cases automation works to make jobs easier and the need for as much staff to go down.

This is not the case for point of sales customer service. At least not until we develop really good AI software. You see automation is not very good at handling nuances. Say someone wants a custom order or an order is wrong or somethings wrong with the food, or maybe the customer needs help with something not quite food related. Also older people hate wrangling with automation. A business shouldn't just abandon those people. A place with a lot of automation in place is going to take longer to respond to those situations since there are less people to deal with it.

So with all this mind allow me to clarify why I won't be going to Wendy's anymore if they automate the clerks here. If you go into the article the OP posted regarding Wendy's you'd find the reason why they are doing this. It wasn't to improve and speed up the process for employees or to improve the customer experience. Here is what the article states why; "Top executives at Wendy's warned last year that such rising costs would force them to automate and eliminate thousands of jobs".

Seems like a bit of a knee jerk reaction to bit of legislation rather than a true innovation for the food industry. Why was this "innovation" not implemented before the legislation went down? Kind of weird huh? I mean if I found a method that served customers better and made my employee's work faster I'd have that as part of all my stores process ASAP. While it's great and understandable they want to save a buck, why should I pay for an incomplete customer experience? I'm getting nothing out of this change except maybe a headache when something doesn't go right. To me this smacks of a large business taking the legislation out on the people rather than "progressing".

You are right in a sense though on your last point. People have a problem of just accepting things. Maybe we should be a bit smarter and wiser about what we choose to buy and who we buy it from.

I think also the self-serving gas stations are there also for a consumer need, namely cheaper gas prices. At least here the prices are always lower on those self-serving stations, and that's why most prefer using them.

I don't think that is really true. First of all, at least here those "self-serving gas stations" don't have any human beings around at all, that's why we call them "cold stations". You pay with your debit/credit card (or some older cold stations may still accept bank notes, but not many do anymore here, you are supposed to have a debit or credit card...) and fill up your car yourself. The only human being needed is someone to bring more gasoline to the station with a tank truck once in a while, and someone occasionally maintaining those machines (in case there is some problem, or if it is filled up with bills).

Also here the banks have clearly gotten rid of most of their tellers and overall reducing their workforce, saying that most people use ATMs and internet banking services anyway. Even when I was negotiating for a mortgage a couple of years ago, some banks arranged only an online meeting (using netmeeting applications etc.), which saves them time = less tellers needed, and can be located anywhere (not necessarily in every bank near all potential customers).

I think these are clear examples of how many processes are automated and "electronized" which means less humans are needed. The same applies to digital gaming stores like GOG.com and Steam, as compared to times when games were delivered as retail items (people needed for manufacturing, delivering and selling all the retail games worldwide).

The reason is the same as with banks, gas stations and digital gaming stores: to reduce costs, so that they can possibly sell their products or services cheaper (than what they could if they still had humans doing all the work that computers and robots can), or that they don't have to increase their prices (as much) and be less competitive.

It would be interesting if Wendy's would have two kinds of restaurants side by side, self-service (with automated clerks) and with humans, and the prices would be higher in the restaurants with humans. Let's see how many people would choose to pay more for the privilege of being served by humans.

Judging by what happened with gas stations, at least here people would choose cheaper prices with self-service/automation. In Finland I don't think there are any gas stations anymore where you have someone pumping gas to your car (I think we've had those like in the 70s or 80s, not after that), people are just not willing to pay extra for that service. They buy where they get the gas the cheapest.

To clarify, while basically all gas stations here are nowadays self-service (you pump the gas to your car yourself), there is still a difference with the "cold stations" (where there are no humans around at all = cheapest prices), and places where there is still some store at the gas station and you can also go inside to pay for your gas, or buy other stuff, and there are also some car maintenance services, car washing etc. offered. These latter places (with humans) always have higher gas prices.

Anyway, everyone is of course free to vote with their wallet. Unfortunately, I've already voted for automation and less human workforce, like buying my gasoline from "cold stations" and games from digital stores like GOG.com.

Hmm sounds like things are bit different over there.I haven't seen too many gas stations that were cold in my area. There has been a few times I wish there was one (particularly real late at night). To be honest I'm not sure if a true cold station is entirely legal in the US.

I'm close to a Bank of America and Wells Fargo and both seem to carry the same level of staff they had almost 30 years ago. About the only thing is that way less people use the drive thru check deposit. And you'd think with the advent of direct deposit (one of my favorite forms of automation) that there wouldn't be a line at any of these places. Strange enough it's not so.

Automation is on it's way in a lot of industries (including the one I work in) but from what I've seen it just makes tasks easier. I've only seen automation eliminate the simplest of jobs. Gas only comes in 1-3 (or 4 grades) possibly, or a train ticket (your start and stop off points are very fixed), but customer service particularly where there are a lot of product options involved (and especially food) is really asking a lot of an automation system. That's not something we can just cobble together between board meetings after one bad financial report in a quarter. That kind of system would need a lot of work. I admit I'm doing a bit of guessing, but I don't think Wendy's is going to give the system due diligence. If it's as bad as I think it will be it could cost them their business (the non tech savvy folk will go elsewhere).

Interestingly enough after reading a few more articles, it seems this change is not a forced one. So we may get that side by side comparison. Actually if you go into a Walmart here in the US you can see the battle up close and personal. They rock both a self checkout kiosk and regular checker. Sure enough they have way more checker stations than self serve stations and those checker lines are insanely long.

I'm not that worried, because I work at a restaurant and someone still needs to MAKE the food even if the cashier is a robot. I think that most jobs will still need some human input. Even if a factory is totally run by robots, you still need to employ people to service said robots.

ASDA, annexed by WalMart a few years back, has Self service and human operated tills.

Most ASDA shops I've been to, the number of self Service check outs is equal to or more that human operated.

Unless we're done a huge monthly shop we use self service. Self service works well with current shopping trends which is little and often.

Most Petrol stations owned by super markets have self service pumps, the big companies like Esso and BP don't seem to have they yet.. Actually to clarify, its not Self Services rather Pay at Pump. We've had to "pump our own gas" for decades. I always thought that was an odd quirk of American culture where the attendant would do that job.

About Wendy's: was it so that they have threatened about "automating" their restaurants, in case some new worker legislation (which would increase their costs) would come into effect?

If they are vocal about it, then i think it is more that they want to affect or prevent that legislation, rather than that they are seriously thinking of getting rid of most of their staff by automation.

Still, e.g. IKEA stores here nowadays have some "self service cash registers" where you scan your purchases yourself and pay with a debit/credit card the the machine. So stores are slowly getting there. They still need some people around those cash registers to counsel people in their use and also to check someone doesn't try to go through without paying, but they need less people that way (e.g. one person looking after two or more lanes).

At some point those might be automated as well, everything you have in your cart is automatically scanned in one swoop when you go through the lane (I recall reading this being tried somewhere already years ago). Then you'd need maybe one or two guards just to check if some people try to go through the lane with aluminum bags or something...

Time for a bump as Über is starting its "autonomous cars service" test phase in Pittsburgh. As it's currently a test, there will still be a human in the driver seat to supervise the car. The Bloomberg artcle is quite extensive on Über strategy and how it goes away from Google and Tesla plans.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on

Skynet ^_^

That is called evolution. Fortunately there is an IT industry. You are not even required to have a degree in it. Just skill.
The whole paradigm must change. Otherwise we will end up in a slave planet or nuclear desert.

The so called cyberpunk world is not even a future. It is actually a reality. Terrorism, corporation control, lots of different crazy sects and religions, totally corrupted politicians going on with auto destruction, people freely giving whole personal information, 20 years of forced schooling that is creating retarded slaves, pollution, gens manipulation, nano technology, bio warfare, mind manipulation. martial laws being here or coming, riot police on mass, most of jobs really create nothing - it is just money for money.

The greatest threat is political correctness (i.e. evil & stupidity) and collectivists forcing it. In west they also support islamists which are another collectivists.