Technology "Killing" Jobs? NEVER.

h/t SiG

SiG had a post.
He noted some folks might think technology and "robots" would cut into jobs.
But he himself was skeptical.
Let me drive an oaken stake through that idea, and then nuke it from orbit, just to be safe.

Yeah, not so much.

1) That's not a "robot", it's simply a machine that can do 1 or 3 human-y things whilst being flung through the air. You've basically given the stunt doubles their own stunt doubles.

2) Some reality from 20+ years behind the camera:
A 20-40 person team of construction grips built the contraptions for that set up, over several days. Possibly even several different teams.
Another 5-10 are standing by for the actual shot.
4-5 electricians lighted it.
Another 6-10 SFX personnel operated the mechanical stunt dummy (not "robot").
It took 10 more to build it. And probably for months, and probably the 4-10 other ones, for when that one gets broken, fails, or just shits the bed. (Read the behind-the-scenes on Jaws and the "revolutionary" mechanical shark sometime.)
You had a crane operator pulling down $100/hr. Maybe 2-3.
Throw in security guards, 3-6, 24/7, just to watch the site.
2-5 person camera crew per camera filming that.
(And 1-4 cameras, including maybe even a remote GoPro type inside the maquette's head.)
Director.
Assistant director.
A couple of production assistants.
A medic for that off-site crew.
Wardrobe person and assistant, as needed, if you put so much as a hat or shoes on it.
5-20 additional personnel for miscellany I'm not even thinking of.
10-500 CG, editing, etc. persons for post-production.
Accounting, payroll, Teamster drivers, craft service, etc. etc. etc.
And the 50-200 employees at the companies that rented the production everything from soup to nuts to bolts to every last damned thing you saw in every shot, forever, plus the people that originally built it.

And the people at the supermarkets, stores, gas stations, restaurants, and landlords where those people spend their paychecks every week.

{Bonus: See if you can guess why I get pissy as hell when mega-jackhole fucktard state governments (Ahnuld, Moonbeam, and the entire CA state legislature et al, call your offices) let motion picture and television productions slip away to BFEgypt, or force them to because of taxes, because they can't figure out that the entertainment business is a trillion dollar industry in America, and a virtual license to print money here, forever. Which is a rant for another time.}

In short, your animatronic dummy, for a single 5 second shot, employed over 100 people for weeks to months, and possibly five times that many, some for half a year.

Yeah, "robots" are taking over Hollywood jobs.
NOT.
(So, ask yourself, did the robot shark in Jaws create less jobs at Universal from 1976-present, or more...? I'll wait.)

I spent most of a week, with a 50-person crew doing CGI for Matrix II and III, just to get reference film for CGI use, with 40+ of us at 35,000', doing zero-G Vomit Comet dives, two hops a day, just for background stunts. It included Keanu Reeve's stunt double (his spitting image, BTW, a total professional and one helluva nice guy all around, and the current director of John Wick and John Wick II, along with about a dozen Mandarin-speaking stunt guys who'd just done Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , so that we could do Neo vs. Kung Fu fight action shots in zero-frickin-gravity for the sequels). So we sent the stunt guy employment numbers literally to 35K', before production even officially started, on those movies alone. You're welcome. Oh, and $420M gross returns, so I think the FX budget paid for itself.

Absolute most fun I ever had at work in Hollywood, and they paid us to do astronaut training NASA used to spend millions of dollars to conduct. (Our entire air crew were former NASA Vomit Comet pilots and flight crew.) And that gig didn't exist in Hollywood from 1900-1998 or so.

And the company that was starting from scratch that week? The one that only existed because Fat Bill was downsizing NASA? They seem to be doing pretty damned well too, and now have multiple aircraft and employ another bunch of people, nearly twenty years later. I was supposed to go on their next L.A.-area flight after the movie work. On 9/15/2001. 9/11 kind of put a crimp in that plan, dammit. (Ray: I'll still fly with you guys anytime, anywhere.) They're now getting $5K a head for a single hop, retail, in a business that didn't exist before they started it.

(Two tips if you ever go up with them (and if you can, you should) straight from me, and the Medical Director of NASA at the time:
1) Dramamine pre-flight. Period.
2) Don't turn your head in the transition from gravity to zero-G, or you'll be puking for days.
Do not question this expertise. You'll pay for it.)

Robotic stunt dummies?

You just tripled production costs, and employed another 100 people, on any movie they're used on, forever.

Please, invent MORE; IATSE and SAG will cream their pants and buy you steak & lobster dinners, forever. And the stunt guys will soak up the easy gigs, and they'll save the spendy machines for the stupid-dangerous dumbshit for productions with more money than brains. So no more jumping off 500' dams, or dangling from cables to get into blown-open 747 cockpits. Boo frickin' hoo.

Back in the day, the pocket-protector dorks promised that "computers would reduce paper records" too.

I doodled and drew for 18 years of growing up on just the reams of discarded paper that they "reduced" for my mom's accounting position with a Fortune 50 company. (This was back before there was an entire industry to store, shred, and recycle it, that didn't exist in 1970 in any way whatsoever.)
And the reduction in a handful of accounting staff was offset by the addition of hundreds to eventually hundreds of thousands of what we now refer to as "IT staff", from programmers to sysops, times infinity.

Job reduction?
Well-played.

Telling me tech is going to reduce jobs is like telling me lawyers will reduce lawsuits.

Stop, you're killing me, and my sides hurt.