It was all a bit of fun when the AI robots came for the $15.00 grocery checker and fast food worker jobs.
In 2010, speech recognition software took away my medical transcriptionist career of 26 yrs. I made $20/hr with 4 weeks of vacation and great health insurance. Nuance, an offshoot of Dictaphone, promised to hire the 35 mostly middle-aged transcriptionists from the hospital, but I would have made about $10/hr with 1 week of vacation and crappy, more expensive insurance. I said “thanks…but no thanks.” I’ve seen close up what automation/AI can do to ppl’s plans for the future.
The ai didn’t replace the checkout clerk.
The customer did.