My friendly algorithm is recently showing me a lot of artificially intelligent programs promising to speed up the process of localization, and make it less “tedious”.

I am reminded of an extended analogy a history professor of mine developed in one of my classes. He talked about the introduction of household appliances, like washing machines. “They make your life easier” was the promise. My professor encouraged us to think about this promise – who would have an easier life?

Some of the very poor would definitely enjoy not having to scrub mountains of dirty clothes by hand any more. A few might have actually have risen in rank and become laundromat owners. Good for them. The other ones probably had to look for some other form of manual labor that could not yet be done by a machine.

Nothing would change for the very rich, who probably couldn’t care less how their laundry got clean. They didn’t have to do it before and they still wouldn’t have to.

The biggest change would happen to those in between, those who had enough money to buy a washing machine. Most of them got rid of their maid because – why pay someone to stand around and do nothing while the washing machine churned away – and now did the laundry themselves. They also loaded the dishwasher, hung up the laundry, ironed the shirts, vacuumed the floors. They were told that this was enormous fun.

The only ones profiting from the deal in any real sense were producers of all those appliances. So far my history professor. The analogy might be a little wonky, but does it sound familiar to anyone?