"Eastern Europe’s chronic labor shortage is feeding into corporate takeover activity, with some companies making acquisitions to snap up skilled workers or obtain expertise needed to expand their businesses." They've never heard of robotics I guess? All those workers are just, killing animals and then cleaning, preparing and transporting them from one assembly line to another, something that can easily be done by robotics. Instead of buying up people, they should invest in robotic technology.
And besides where are those migrants when you need them? They migrated to Europe and want to work? Why aren't they put on those lines?
Thats a bloody stupid suggestion. Companies are not doing it for a reason. I presume the article doesnt only relate to abattoirs like you see in the images. Mechanical engineers, plumbers, electricians...good luck trying to automate those skills.
One day they will ALL be automated. It's just a matter of time. One day, even engineering would be done by machines; it would be machines designing machines. In the article, apparently automation has already been utilized by the companies experiencing the labor shortage. Welcome to the brave new world!!
I think Musk tried automating his car manufacturing and ended up regretting that decision (could be wrong but I seem to remember reading that ). When the government stops allowing migrants, they lose easy votes. You possibly could replace workers but robots dont vote. Angry people sitting jobless at home with a hungry family can and will vote with a bit of rioting looting and mayhem thrown in just to prove a point.
You're fantisizing about something that is very difficult. At the current level of AI, which everyone admits, is only incremental due to hardware improvements from something 20 years ago, I expect in 20 years we can ask a computer to write a sort algorithm in C++ from scratch. One key aspect to really automating humans is replicating the human nervous system. The amount and speed of information that is processed by a human brain in conjunction with the rest of the body is ridiculous. Then the next thing will be efficiently teaching it. Deep Go et al only work because the games have rules and can repeatedly play itself. Life does not have hard and fast rules that can be encoded nor simulated, only experience teaches that. There are sci-fi books about companion AI which is likely what I think will be the most probable outcome.
Imagine that you are born and you have a chip attached to you that experiences everything you experience and can communicate with you. Your companion for life. I think this is going to happen.
The ugly portion of that reality is that buried in that chip will be a mechanism to control the implantee's neural system by the people at the top of the cultural hierarchy. A different war will be at hand.