> For the record I am a cynical technophile by any measure. I have been called callous (and much worse) for statements like “starvation is a self-solving problem. Eventually there will be enough food for all, as the population decreases”… don’t think me anti-automation; this edge case is a thing that makes me go “hmmm…”

Here is the thing, this isn't as linear as you make it out to be and is seemingly not taking into account very obvious escalation of things as Society fails to deliver and fail it's populace: protests, strikes, peasant revolts, and eventually total war. You cannot exclude the lower rungs of Society and expect that because of 'progress' things will sort themselves out.

Just look at the wide-spread amount misery we've seen since 2008, people creating tent cities and the mass homelessness has led to a Humanitarian crisis, and an epidemic itself.

With that said, recycle sorting is a MVP for AI/ML applications: it's a low paid, and hard job that requires a perpetual stream of exploitable underclass based labour: even if someone would want to do the job short term out of desperation, it isn't one that will be held long term so the churn, specifically turnover, is probably not worth the cost in retraining Human based worksforce.

Matanya Horowitz a grad from CU Boulder, and eventually PhD grad from CalTech, was working on this [0] when I used to work out of the engineer department, he eventually went on to start an AI based robotics company (AMP) and raised 75 million since it's inception.

I'm also of the POV, after having done Ag myself and seeing the complexity of supply chains and the inherent pitfalls and obstacles it relies on, that farming must go at least 90% automated: primarily it is based on the fact that ~99% of the population relies on the other 1% to feed itself since that is Globally the amount of people involved in Ag--and the average age of farmers Globally is well into late 50s an early 60s. This is an imperative issue that requires more talent focus on automated processes in the laborious and most physically straining aspects that require often short-term and poorly compensated migrant labour--it's essentially slave labour 'with more steps.'

Instead of creating scripts for IT departments you should perhaps you should stop focusing your energy on such low-hanging fruit if you really believe what you wrote and focus on the major existential issues before you start wielding your technophile iron fist and talking about social engineering on this scale. Moreover a month's work of seemingly meaningless manual labour would also give you some much needed clarity and perspective.

With that said, I went from fintech founder to working for a megacorp and quit because I felt my skills were being wasted and did my last stint in kitchens right before COVID when the 'burger flippers, and food delivery people are obsolete and will be automated' rhetoric was at ATH. After COVID (which is still a thing) it's pretty clear now that reality hit those people incredibly hard, and salaries in those Industries have finally caught up with the demand from the Market as more people refused to come back and the 'automate everything' crowds are licking their wounds with mediocre results.

I went back to school to study AI and ML because I want to focus on automating Ag, and even with the leap it has amongst most other Industries, there are still a myriad of issues to work on in regards to Computer Vision and engineering feats that are optimized for crop-specific harvests and weeding.

We're getting a taste of what broken supply chains and surging costs is having to Society, and the truth is as bad as it is still (barely) working; and when food stops being delivered is when Society starts to undo itself incredibly fast.

0: https://businessden.com/2017/11/02/cu-grad-raises-3m-recycli...

1: https://www.colorado.edu/coloradan/2021/07/02/cu-alum-create...