Overautomation

It’s a real thing.

In the right corners of the internet, you’ll find fear about automation taking over jobs, and in some aspects the worriers are correct. Automation can do certain tasks better than a human. Faster computations. Higher precision surgical tools. Longer hours.

What automation can’t do better is be flexible and think critically.

Imagine a machine that fills bottles with soda and caps them. All of a sudden, you need that machine to fill 5 gallon jugs. It probably requires a change of line equipment. Adjustments to height, fill times, feed rates. There is a setup cost to the shift. A human that was filling bottles may have been slower, but at the switch from bottles to large containers, it’s almost instantaneous by comparison.

People are amazingly complex machines. Versatile beyond belief. Easily able to expand other auxiliary devices such as tools, computers, software, and even other machinery.

Be flexible, and opportunity will always be found, at least until the robot overlords show up!