We went to a Sonic over the summer that had one employee and one manager on duty.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
“This program may be pre-recorded”
- Thread starter placebo1969
- Start date
Yeah, and it took decades for people used to manual transmissions to move to automatic ones. Most of the objection initially was warranted; they were jerky and prone to expensive service needs. But eventually they got it right and now a manual in anything but a truck or a sports car is very unusual.
Most people will gladly trade misunderstood orders for clear instructions selectable on a screen. And most people know how to text and post messages so they will happily transition to a system they know at their food service location. But there will be plenty of Luddites and many fast food outlets will decide when it is no longer economical to serve them.
Good example. Now, most people know that the ATM is faster, very very accurate and very easy to use. Yet in my areaa I see some people in my area going into the bank just to get cash from their account. There are two identifiable groups: immigrants who may not have a bank card and have language problems reading the ATM text and very senior seniors who just like the old ways; they will go home and watch more episodes of The Waltons.
Of course, I remember when I opened my first checking account that the banks required three lines: first, one to present the transaction such as cashing or depositing or doing exchange. Second was a window to verify the person's identity and check the documents. Third was a window where you got your receipt, cash or other papers. Each window had a line you had to stand in. Making a deposit could take an hour. Like many, I hired a person to do deposits and withdrawals, pay the electric, phone and other bills, collect invoices and other stand-in-line tasks.
Last edited:
We got the first Sonic in our immediate area about 9 months ago. I had the chance to chat with the original manager, who had major staffing issues. The company offered $16 an hour (a buck over the CA minimum), reasonable insurance and other benefits and was better positioned than many fast food establishments.
But so many people were getting CA and Federal pandemic benefits that required no work that the majority of applicants who did qualify were not proficient in English; they could work as part of kitchen teams but they could not do the counter or the window.
In my area, I am encountering more and more people with "no English" in the last year. Fortunately, that is not a problem for me and I end up getting skilled household help and service for less money. But this may indicate one of the issues in many parts of the US.
My state was one of the red states that cut the pandemic unemployment early to "force those lazy peasants to serve curly fries". It didn't has the desired effect
If the federal minimum wage, established in 1967, kept up with inflation it would be in the neighborhood of $21 per hour. Since the early 80s we have seen wage stagnation (not coincidentally around the same time that a concerted effort was placed on delegitimizing unions.) If that manager isn't getting the people he needs at 16 bucks an hour, then capitalism would say that he better raise his rate until he does.
He is not competing against the "subsidy programs", as gr8oldies pointed out. Wall Street Journal ran the numbers and saw there was zero correlation between the filling of low wage jobs and whether the unemployment extensions existed in an area or not. What HAS happened during this pandemic is that a whole lot of skilled and older workers have either decided to permanently leave the workforce or alter the work that they do. This has created a big gap in the upper management fields and everything is flowing upwards. Note the Journal said this was happening before the pandemic even started. COVID just increased the speed where a demographic movement was already occurring.
Bottom line, too few GenXers and Gen Y folks exist to replace all the Boomers that left the market. Many of the folks that were "flipping burgers" and now flipping stocks or what have you. It's a GOOD thing for society to have real upward mobility, correct? But this upward mobility comes at a cost to the Walmarts and Sonics of the world. Those companies didn't get there by being stupid, and they will figure it out. And substantial automation will be a large part of that solution.
He is not competing against the "subsidy programs", as gr8oldies pointed out. Wall Street Journal ran the numbers and saw there was zero correlation between the filling of low wage jobs and whether the unemployment extensions existed in an area or not. What HAS happened during this pandemic is that a whole lot of skilled and older workers have either decided to permanently leave the workforce or alter the work that they do. This has created a big gap in the upper management fields and everything is flowing upwards. Note the Journal said this was happening before the pandemic even started. COVID just increased the speed where a demographic movement was already occurring.
Bottom line, too few GenXers and Gen Y folks exist to replace all the Boomers that left the market. Many of the folks that were "flipping burgers" and now flipping stocks or what have you. It's a GOOD thing for society to have real upward mobility, correct? But this upward mobility comes at a cost to the Walmarts and Sonics of the world. Those companies didn't get there by being stupid, and they will figure it out. And substantial automation will be a large part of that solution.
Sorry for the late reply, but it suprises me too. Never give up hope, though. I have a realitive in her 70's who bought a cell phone 6 months ago. About a week in, she absolutely hated it, but now, she has cut everything in favor of the cell phone. The key is patience and of course, I don't blame anyone for their reservations. This is coming pretty fast for everyone (although "smart" phones have now been around for 14+ years) at a breakneck pace.
And when the so-called upward mobility also affects everything from food packaging to fast foods, the nation loses the ability to be self sustaining.
At present, so little of our manufactured goods are produced domestically that even when we see things like a BMW plant in South Carolina we need to understand that nearly all the parts are made elsewhere. High wages by world standards force most industries to locate outside the US and the internal US market is relatively small at about 3.5% of the world population: the sustainability of high cost US products is disappearing.
The current solution is to import blue collar workers, mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean but increasingly from Africa, Asia and countries of conflict in the Middle East. That tends to bring down the average education levels, which hurts everything from our schools to our ability to compete in world markets.
Perhaps the projection has to go outside our lifetimes, but the reality of the Detroit autoworker who has a vacation and weekend home on one of those lakes in Northern Michigan, a stay at home mom, and a couple of kids following in his footsteps has faded in the last few decades.
Today's kids will see their grandchildren speaking Chinese.
You see how Americans are reacting to inflation, right? One effect of higher wages is higher prices. If restaurants have to pay more for their staff, they will pass those increased costs on to their customers.
If you want to keep prices low, you have to keep production costs low.
And fortunately for many retired, Social Security benefits are rising as well. But interest rates remain low for those with savings. Why has this component not changed? Or is it just lagging short-term?
Interest rates are based on the Federal Reserve. The Fed kept rates low for a long time, which made buying property and going into debt a good idea. But the real reason savings interest rates are so low (compared to 30 years ago) is because of changes in the banking business. They would rather you take your savings and invest in stocks. Since banks can handle that, it's better for them.
As mentioned in another discussion thread, many Americans have a bad knack of wanting it both ways. They want plentiful jobs that pay a solid minimum wage, and some (especially in the rust belt areas and similar) want the ability to do what their parents and grandparents had been able to do - have little to no higher education, fall into a well-paying, relatively unskilled job and easily afford a nice home, a weekend retreat for the family, receive full benefits and have a nice nest egg awaiting them in retirement.
On the other hand, while they dream of having all those things, they also get violently angry when the price of anything goes up to offset the rising cost of labor, they gripe when things are made of plastic rather than solid steel as they once where, they despise self-checkouts at the grocery store and things like ATMs, they complain when inflation kicks in and are ready to vote the leading party out of office immediately, and they do their shopping at Walmart, Sam's Club and Costco.
Exactly...buy American is a wonderful ideal. We all love the way it sounds. Until we look at the specifics. We used to have a very successful electronics industry in this country. We built TVs and radios in the USA! Then Japan did it cheaper, then Mexico did it cheaper, then Korea did it cheaper, and now it's China. The only way to get a 55" TV for $300 is to have it made in China (which is what I did for the TV I'm watching now).
Yep my big Philips tv was indeed cheap and was probably made in China.
Many economists love ultra low interest rates and cheap debt, as it encourages a "borrow and spend mentality" which in turn keeps the velocity of money high and the economy humming. Cheap debt can also be used for investing; the idea being that investment returns will far outpace the cost of servicing the debt, so "everything's fine" and you come out ahead. Of course this all assumes an idealized outcome...if your income sources get squeezed or cut off for whatever reason, the debt is still there, which can have disastrous consequences.
The same economists pushing cheap debt consider traditional savings accounts as dead, unproductive money. Interest rates are cratered in order to force money out of those accounts and into investment assets, which then rise in value due to increased demand. Paying off your home mortgage is also discouraged by such a mindset...a paid off house is considered an unproductive asset trap holding dead money.
So we have a society where everything is fueled by cheap debt...until inflation rears its ugly head...and interest rates have to go up in order to raise more capital to back more debt...the cost of borrowing increases...people get into a debt service crunch...and the spiral begins.
From a few word disclaimer I heard on KISW and KZOK to a discussion about inflation and economics. 
This thread delivers.
This thread delivers.
My point was not that McDonald's had car hops. The point is that 75% of the folks who post here are still living back in that era.
That radio and the "record" industry are the same as they've always been when they used to hide under the covers with a transistor radio.
AI is not the same as voice tracking. A synthesized voice is not AI. AI stands for 'Artificial Intelligence'. Essentially that's where a computer can make independent decisions based on data derived by itself, the Public Internet, or multiple human input. There are electronically-generated speech options going back to the 70's. Much of that started with Texas Instruments Digi-talker chip. The TI chip wasn't AI either.
You are forgetting that AI may be used for news and other information announcements. Bots will scan the internet for news stories, compile them, and another bot will read them over the air, using a human-like, synthesized voice that will sound as real as yours or mine. That is a form of AI.
A large LA newspaper already used AI to place news stories on its website a few years ago. I'm sure some papers and other news organizations are using them now. The only thing keeping it from being used more on the radio is the quality of the voice used.
AI is used on the local NOAA weather radio. All the voices are computer synthesized, and during the tornado watch on November 6th, the NOAA station's broadcast was a computer synthesized voice reading off the NWS tornado watch report, which probably had AI involved in the process somewhere.
Large corporations use AI to hire and fire people. If a computer geek looked at that particular process, he or she would say it's just a computer program, and not AI. But it's called AI just the same, because a computer program often simulates a form of "intelligence". The term "AI" has broadened in definition since the 1970s, when it first came into common parlance. AI is "intelligence demonstrated by machines", and that term is quite broad in its application.
Either way -- however you want to term it -- the radio industry will undoubtedly take advantage of more of these computer derived voices as soon as the voices are viable and glitch free. No people necessary to do liners or voicetracks.
I can tell when Aly and the overnight guy are tracked. Sometimes Big Rig too. Tanner sounds pretty live. Sarge sounds live doing BWTB, I would give my eye teeth to track that show from here.. Just sayin!
Russian, Chinese, or even bots from Israel, do take in hot topics from the Internet, then generate counter narratives or conspiracies, 99% of the time in some form of print or photos. That requires a certain amount of autonomy. Chances are many of the posts you regularly absorb on Farsebook are from those very bots.
As someone being paid to manage operations and technical aspects, including future tech for a major broadcast entity, I can assure you that artificial voices or animated news anchors are not a high priority. Maybe someday artificial voices will be used for animated movie characters, or perhaps even radio voice tracks as a subscription service someday. Zero broadcasters are interested in AI controlling what the voice says. You're barking up the wrong tree.
Its actually faster and more efficient to hire talent to record tracks, than it would be for someone to write scripts for an artificial voice.
Sure, every station owner would want the clear voice of 'Paul', 'New Paul' and 'Tom' on their stations. Those voices read from a script. There is no AI involved.
That's an HR department using AI applications to screen resume's. There's been a lot of push-back about that sort of AI, because it's been shown where perfectly qualified candidates are excluded from the running because the code read the resume out of context. It's also been known to discriminate against people of color.
No it isn't. A digitized voice exhibits no intelligence, nor autonomy. It's a voice that plays sounds out from code or textual input.
^^^^ You make some good points, but when I read in the news articles periodically about AI eventually eliminating about half the jobs in the US economy, over the next couple decades possibly, I would hazard a guess that your broadcast media conglomerates would be definitely on that bandwagon.
It's not like technology hasn't eliminated / replaced radio and broadcast jobs before. Even here on RD, the experts have admitted that tech eliminated radio jobs over the years.
AI is tech. And the definition of "AI" has also altered from the specific one you have been using. After all, what is 'intelligence'? Is a spider, which exhibits less brain power than a laptop computer, 'intelligent'?
Here is a Time Magazine article on AI. Much of what they deal with appears to be robotics. Robotics are controlled by program. So one could say that the robotic "butler" in the pic really isn't using AI. It's just an app, a really big and powerful app. We used robotics where I used to work. It was just a big app.
time.com
It's not like technology hasn't eliminated / replaced radio and broadcast jobs before. Even here on RD, the experts have admitted that tech eliminated radio jobs over the years.
AI is tech. And the definition of "AI" has also altered from the specific one you have been using. After all, what is 'intelligence'? Is a spider, which exhibits less brain power than a laptop computer, 'intelligent'?
Here is a Time Magazine article on AI. Much of what they deal with appears to be robotics. Robotics are controlled by program. So one could say that the robotic "butler" in the pic really isn't using AI. It's just an app, a really big and powerful app. We used robotics where I used to work. It was just a big app.
Millions of Americans Have Lost Jobs in the Pandemic — And Robots and AI Are Replacing Them Faster Than Ever
The drive to replace humans with machinery is accelerating as companies struggle to avoid workplace infections of COVID-19
time.com
Last edited:
- Status