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If I Had a Hammer
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tom Friedman begins his latest op-ed in the NYT with an anecdote about Dutch chess grandmaster Jan Hein Donner who, when asked how he'd prepare for a chess match against a computer, replied: 'I would bring a hammer.' Donner isn't alone in fantasizing that he'd like to smash some recent advances in software and automation like self-driving cars, robotic factories, and artificially intelligent reservationists says Friedman because they are 'not only replacing blue-collar jobs at a faster rate, but now also white-collar skills, even grandmasters!' In the First Machine Age (The Industrial Revolution) each successive invention delivered more and more power but they all required humans to make decisions about them. ... Labor and machines were complementary. Friedman says that we are now entering the 'Second Machine Age' where we are beginning to automate cognitive tasks because in many cases today artificially intelligent machines can make better decisions than humans. 'We're having the automation and the job destruction,' says MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson. 'We're not having the creation at the same pace. There's no guarantee that we'll be able to find these new jobs. It may be that machines are better than that.' Put all the recent advances together says Friedman, and you can see that our generation will have more power to improve (or destroy) the world than any before, relying on fewer people and more technology. 'But it also means that we need to rethink deeply our social contracts, because labor is so important to a person's identity and dignity and to societal stability.' 'We've got a lot of rethinking to do,' concludes Friedman, 'because we're not only in a recession-induced employment slump. We're in technological hurricane reshaping the workplace.'"
Why shouldn't machines eventually take the jobs humans currently do, but could be done better by a computer? Wouldn't that leave everyone with the option to use their minds rather than muscles for those things humans are best at, such as true creativity? I personally think robots at McDonald's would be far superior and everyone's life will be so much richer there won't be the need for the concept of minimum-wage and grunt-work jobs. Except for those who really prefer the grunt part.
Some people need to dedicate a second to imagine a world where one person's work can support a hundred thousand. Centuries ago, the end of the era where 90% of the population had to work in the fields to feed everyone didn't create 80% of unemployment.
There is no limit to the total amount of possible "work" to be done. Just as we went from production to services, we'll go maybe to science, or to entertainment, or to space exploration. Most of the proletariat will also probably reduce their daily working hours, increasing the demand for entertainment and other services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Computers and automated systems are not replacing any cognitive tasks soon, at least not economically. Sure, if you throw in a team of engineers, several years of research and a couple million euro/dollars, then you can build a computer that can defeat a chess grandmaster. But until engineering companies are actually laying off their engineers and designers and replacing them with computers, I am not worried.
Computers are likely to replace the more simple jobs (as they always have). Driving a lorry or car is not exactly a highly skilled job, and I would be delighted if that is automated.
Sounds like hard work. Can't we get a computer to do it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There are two basic approaches to handle this:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Computers replacing human's is fantastic, it frees us up to do what we want to do.
Well, it would if it wasn't for the fact that the monetary system is designed in such a way that unless we all work like dogs the economy goes to shit and we end up with a vast uneducated, depressed and criminal underclass.
There is a way out of this, but it involves stepping off the money-is-debt forced march that humanity is on at the moment [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Grip-Death-Destructive-Economics/dp/1897766408], otherwise the 1% we will end up having to exterminate the 99% [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm]
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I don't buy that the demise of the median worker has anything to do with technological progress. If the average income increases steadily and the median declines, it simply means that a society has problems to fairly allocate its resources. Since people making less than the median typically also make up 50% of the electorate, it looks like these people are voting against their own interests (or do not vote at all). One also has to keep in mind that the events that hurt the median worker the most (deregulation of banks, Bush-style tax cuts, and the whole war on terror) were all political descisions that were completely unrelated to technology.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
BTW this dude self-scanned $100 worth of groceries at Coles, got charged $62. He feels bad that he doesn't feel bad: http://www.vice.com/read/i-dont-feel-that-bad-about-stealing-from-coles-but-i-feel-bad-about-not-feeling-bad http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/shady-shoppers-stealing-millions-using-scanner-trciks/story-e6frfmd9-1226514344385
12 people built and ran instagram before it was bought out by facebook. They created $1.2 billion dollars of value. That's $100 million each. To generate $100 million in value in the manufacturing sector requires considerably more resources, long term investments and planning. And employees. And management.
The mail order company I worked for, their online division kept growing and growing the share of sales but they didn't lay off anyone in the mail order division due to loyalty to the employees. But they also didn't hire anyone new. Newcomers to their market don't even have a printed catalog anymore, and mail orders are processed by the IT staff on an ad hoc basis. Newcomer companies just have 2-3 employees where legacy companies have 20 or more along with 10 years of paper records to store and organize.
Yesterday I wrote a script that automates 80% of my coworker's job which was manual data entry for our system, which will allow our department to shed 1-2 jobs over the next 2-3 years.
Heck the financial industry used to be 100% manually processed and employed many many thousands of people across the country, now most trades are processed through four or five "large" firms who employ a couple hundred employees each in just a few cities.
Brick and mortar retail is seeing a decline matched almost dollar for dollar with gains in online retail, especially on holiday sales events.
If you don't see the data, it's because you're actively avoiding looking for it.
moox. for a new generation.
... the majority of humanity is not creative or particularly smart. And if there are few jobs for them to do because machines do all the grunt work what exactly do you expect them to do? I can tell you what they WILL do if the majority of the population is unemployed - riot.
I agree with your tirade, AC...there's no rational reason not to advance as humans and take advantage of the automation we can achieve today.
There IS a reason...it's not rational but it is always in play when it comes to any capital resource or essential service: artificial scarcity.
A human engineered economic shortage in some way, a shortage that would not exist in a natural free-market scenario.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Historically, technological revolutions have eliminated large categories of jobs. Many manual jobs are now performed by machines, even skilled manual jobs. An economist might say that these former manual workers are now free to retrain, and do other things - (or just grow old and die, and be replaced by youngsters who have never known the old way, and have learnt the right skills to get along in this new world whilst growing up).
The question is, what happens when literally everything of economic value that a person is capable of doing, can be accomplish more efficiently by a machine? More and more resources come under the complete control of fewer and fewer people, and for the rest of the population, what is left?
I believe that once machines obviate the need for large human organisations, with their attendant inefficiencies, a form of democratic socialism will become the preferred way to run society. Resources owned collectively, with broad decisions made democratically, but organisational details left to machines to optimise and execute. People would be provided for, because it is easy to produce enough to do it.
Ok, jobs in manufacturing have been greatly reduced over the past century and the individual productivity sky-rocketed. The consequence was consumer goods became dirt cheap and few people work at producing them - at least in the western world.
Now things start the same with knowledge jobs and some services. With a diagnostic tricorder, automatic blood analyser and self-service MRI, the doctors and many specialists at the labs will have a good part of their work disappear or be replaced by a friendly unskilled worker telling you where to place your hand and hand you the print-out. Another set of jobs on the way out are train-drivers, truckers, taxi-drivers and pilots, they have a big chance of being replaced by computers in the near future.
What will be the consequence? Will the world end? Will the mschines rise and Skynet take over?
One of the first consequences will be, that the value of the service rendered will be greatly devaluated. In the end, we humans pay manly for three things: The value of the raw materials, the necessary investments for the production site and the time spent by a human to create the product. If the latter two drop significantly, the second because the productivity of the machines go up and the third because of automation, then simple we won't be willing to pay as much for the product and spend out money elsewhere. This elsewhere is where the jobs for humans will be.
For one, personal comfort services are very often hard to automate. Hairdressers and make-up stylists will be be hard to replace by computers. As another consequence, the organisations will fill with pointless jobs which keep each other busy. We see that today with all the consultants, controllers, marketing departments, safety and security people, quality assurance, project managers, application owners and so on. Those are nearly totally unproductive or, the few that are good at their job, cost only a little less than what their work saves. This is the negative aspect, but the same also exists in positive. Skilled people are able to spend more time doing things not possible before. Today, many illnesses have been identified that before didn't have a name because people died of other things first. And for many of those illnesses, cures have been developed.
In the end, humans will go on pushing the envelope, being that with discovering new cures to make life longer and better or be that by spending more effort on hairdos and the next fashion in legging-design. Automated tasks will just become a commodity, no matter how complicated it is. If you don't believe me, just look at that mobile phone of yours and look around how many designer cases are floating around. People are willing to spend 25% of the value of the phone on a piece of printed plastic with some designer-scribbles on it.
I love how you assume that you're everyone. Tons and tons of people define themselves by their jobs. Go ask any actor or journalist if they'd like to take a prole job for twice the pay. No freaking way. Proles don't get invited to parties.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Did facebook actually pay 1.2bn dollars, or did they just pay with facebook stocks of that "value"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The sincerity in this argument is an admission that, in reality, the 1% that make up the wealthiest of human beings consider the rest to be slaves, be it to labour, or interest rates or just putting food on the table.
Consequently, the externality from their pursuit of automation is making more and more people slaves so that we are always competing with one another for a dollar instead of the market competing for our labour, which drives labour prices up. As long as there is a steady rate of unemployment around 10%, every person will fear for their job and be a subservient slave, too afraid to attend to matters of democracy or society. That's what that 1% want from their win-win situation.
However I think it's 50's thinking that drives it and the fear. Technology is a gift that will either enslave or free the human race and most people can't comprehend what it means to them. So too many of the people who devise the technology. To me automation means I kick back a work for an hour or two while my automation does the work for me. That's because I control the technology I deliver and the reason I control it is because I have educated myself to do so. So the automation allows me to educate myself more - improving my life.
We have to ask ourselves what happens when the Western worlds labour becomes obsolete in a world that is competing for resources and corruption is inherent in every political system in the world. Personally, I want technology do better for people not profits, however it was my own naivety that blinded me to the fact that those who control the deployment of technology en-mass, aren't even people any more - they're company boards legally obliged to make a profit.
Our role as technologist's is also changing with the automation. You can bet that people will begin to cast blame on those who devise technology so unless we are prepared to push back and be cognisant enough to take a lead role in society and educate them about the choices they make the consequences of that fear will be played out on us hapless geeks.
If the cost of education goes down as the price of energy goes up we stand a chance to find a way to reduce our slavery and perhaps live better. My old mentor used to tell me 'You bleed on the cutting edge of technology' and, like a knife it will be used like a tool and a weapon to sculpt or subjugate our entire society.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Agreed.
A person requires two separate lives. Work life is but one and no matter how passionate about the subject I might be, it is primarily to earn money. You ensure you earn money and continue to do so in the future by doing a good, professional job of things, don't get me wrong. And you might well be passionate about your work. But it should not take over your life.
Fact is, if you told the average person that they'd never have to go to work again, they would NOT do the things that they do as part of their working life. You are not going to see these people walking into their work at an insurance brokers and trying to arrange policies. You might, just might, find a scientist or maybe a passionate person offer their services after such an event but, in general, across the various workforces those people don't have to worry about their identity or robots coming in to do their jobs for them.
There's a couple of countries that don't understand work-life separation and they are usually the ones where you can convince people with the "cheerlead" method of inspiration ("Woohoo! Let's go do this!") and not much else. But I'm not convinced that, even under the facade, this is a healthy option, or that over-dedication is rewarded.
My previous boss basically worked himself into hospital, such was his dedication to the workplace, but it was never adequately recognised and he calmed himself down and moved on.
Every employer I go to seems to want me, at some point, to prove I have a life outside work. Literally, they have application forms that ask about my non-work-related interests and specifically say things about it not drawing on your working skillset. They don't want mindless drones with a single interest. They want humans who are happy and have a life. And I work in IT!
I don't want to work with, nor do I want to be, a corporate drone. I work as a payment to do the things I enjoy doing. Fortunately, I enjoy the majority of my work too. But even among my friends and family, my work life is a separate, mysterious thing that they don't see (unless they come work with me, like my brother did just recently).
Work is not part of my identity - it's another identity that I assume in order to live my life comfortably. If it were not necessary, that persona would not exist. And if I ever find my work identity being all I have in life, I think I'd have to seriously consider what I'm doing with it.
This is ridiculous. The capabilities of man + machine will always be greater than the capabilities of a machine by itself, so we're not going to run out of intellectual jobs just because machines can do smarter things. Machines, including computers, are just power tools for the brain. (And I say this even as a full-time AI researcher with a PhD in the field, developing new AI algorithms for my day job at a major tech company.)
I don't want to disrespect grandmasters. Not even lesser chess players as I think their mental capabilities are impressive. But jobs consisting of repetitive actions are the ones we need to get rid of by all means. Shovelling coals requires physical strength and endurance. Playing chess requires a huge mental container to consider many moves ahead but no particular level of creativity. Creativity is the main property/virtue that creates added value. Acquiring creativity is much harder than than using sheer mental power in learning facts from books. It requires a peculiar combination of a laissez faire attitude (to brood over concepts) and determination in grasping concepts. Overdoing the "laissez faire" bit inevitably will backfire and hence creativity comes at a high risk which in its turn must inevitably translate into higher earnings and appreciation.
The question now is what we will do when everyone is out of a job. There's no clear answer but we can assume a few things. One is that society fares better when people are employed. The second is that values shift and that we pay more for property and services that are scarce or that are a nuisance. So how will employed society look like in 30 years? War and other instabilities hurt business and therefore new activities will appear in order to prevent these. So which ones will come? I don't know but I'm sure there will be. Perhaps working on a way to extract desert heat and to bring water to it in order to allow crops to grow and humans to live. To me such ideas seem easier to entertain than say smart phones 100 years ago.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
... the amount of potential work is limitless.
Is it?
That's no easier to prove than the assertion that jobs are disappearing.
Us humans have considerable appetites, but they are not infinite. We only require so much living space, clothing, food or entertainment. If automation continues to improve productivity there will come a time when the labor of some fraction of the population is capable of fully satisfying every human being alive. The only question is at what point does that happen.
It will happen a lot sooner if you define it as "fully satisfying all basic needs". But if we ever crack real AI, the only constraining factor on what we can provide each individual will be energy, not human labor.
This tipping point may be centuries in the future or it may be a few decades away and we're seeing the start of it. It's impossible to tell until after the fact. But denying that it can ever happen isn't helping. Increased automation will inevitable lead to the redundancy of human labor if automation continues to grow unbounded.
There is, of course, the possibility that automation will stop growing for some, as yet, unknown reason.
TL;DR We can't know how much of an issue automation replacing human labor will be. But blithely ignoring the issue isn't helpful.
Seriously, extreme claims require evidence.
Friedman speaks ex cathedra.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Actually, if you look at youth employment it's pretty clear that 'we' don't have jobs. Even the people who do aren't benefiting from the increase in productivity which became detached from wage increases around 30 years ago.
I'm always cynical about any view of doom based on extrapolation. We've seen again and again that we adjust. If there was one slightly different aspect of the current issue it is that the rate of change is vastly increased and the level of expertise is much higher now. When cars led to stablehands losing jobs they probably didn't have to do any training to move into another role. When miners lost their jobs to automation a couple of weeks of training was probably about all they needed to get into another role (actually in the UK we are still feeling the impact of those job losses). When doctors, who spend 5+ years studying and training, get largely replaced by machines then how long will it take them to retrain into a role that a computer still can't do (biochemist perhaps)?
The average level of a job worth employing a human over a machine for is increasing rapidly. The level and quality of education of the population isn't. We aren't preparing the youth of today to all be particle physicists and genetic research post-doctorates so why expect that everyone is going to be able to do something that a machine can't do better and cheaper in just a few years time.
The solution, up to this point, has been busy work. Based on my experience, 90% of the work being done today is unnecessary. Almost all of the paperwork being done could be replaced by competent automation (though a lot of it has been replaced incompetently and actually lead to more work), most service sector jobs are entirely unnecessary but provide some convenience to those with money. Many engineering jobs are just repeating work that's been done before (but the information was lost, kept secret, or poorly maintained), a lot of the work that is necessary is done very inefficiently. Basically, the only reason most of us even have jobs is the greed or incompetence of some moneyed person or politician or criminal.
Dear PhD AI worker,
How come you're not being paid 2x what you are now? Yes, 2x. Productivity of the worker has gone up 2x in real terms since 1973. Yet your pay is less than that, even YOURS, Dr. AI worker.
Suppose most jobs are automated, and the few remaining jobs have many highly qualified people who need that job. What happens to the price of labor? Market forces push wages down--people underbid you just to work. THAT is why your pay doesn't match your productivity. And the trend is accentuating.
Those high paid high level creative jobs you like to imagine? They ONLY exist if there is market for them, i.e., if the 1% (or whoever controls the resources) decides to allocate resources for them.
And they're not, hence the depressed wages ACROSS THE BOARD. I've got a PhD too, doing creative non-automatable work, and I SURE WOULD like to be getting paid 2x as much. But I'm not, and it's flatly because the rest of the labor market is depressed.
I'd sure love to keep doing creative non-automatable work, but I can only do that if it pays, which in turn depends on how many creative non-automatable jobs the 1% wants to devote resources for. And guess what: the 1% is apparently deciding that research and technology investment needs to drop because it is a "cost". Government investment is declining too. So capital (the 1%) thrives on productivity increases and everyone who must labor, is, frankly, slowly starving to death.
At least in the USA.
--PM
... a bigger hammer.
On the serious side, since all this technology is supposed to make our life experience more enjoyable, otherwise why are we doing this (greed of the few or competition mindset???) I want to know why our paid vacations are not getting longer.
Oh wait, there is a growing number of Americans on long vacations, sort of..... its called unemployment.
Maybe we really do need a bigger hammer.
I remember that story, it's not that bad at first but it soon devolves into Utopian wishful thinking. I like to think that the dude overdosed on something while in the concrete block and the flight into the paradise-Australia that looks and sound communist but is totally not communist and people surrender their very brains to computers that are totally never going to go rampant or be subverted and where he marries the totally-hot chick who he just met and is the first female he ever talked to in the story is just an hallucination.
But... the future refused to change.
I am fairly sure we're going to be looking at two very different classes of machine: One, the AI, isn't going to be "owned" by anyone other than itself, just as you aren't owned by anyone. It may, or may not, have some obligations, but ownership of an intelligent being... probably not going to happen again. I hope.
Two, non-intelligent worker robots that have enough compute power to deal with cleaning your house, taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, that sort of thing, but not an original thought anywhere to be seen. I expect those to be in service to both humans and intelligent machines.
Well, we're not even close to AI yet, nor have service machines reached even a fraction of their potential. Lots of time remains for the economic system(s) to mutate such that human labor is not directly coupled to our ability to survive. I fully expect this to happen; we can see it already in smaller ways, as costs drop precipitously for what used to be high expense items and services. For instance, I have a Roomba, and it was *far* less expensive than hiring someone to vacuum. So far, the only after-purchase expense has been a minuscule amount of electricity. That's the nature of service robotics. Smart thermostats, lawn mowers, even things as simple as toasters remove our various concerns and replace them with well accomplished tasks. Presuming nothing catastrophic happens, there's every reason to think this trend will accelerate and grow -- I expect few would turn down economically feasible replacements for drudge work. And of course, in a system of plenty, free equates directly to economically feasible.
From TFS:
Assumes facts not in evidence. Labor produces money, and money is (presently) the key to a person's identity and dignity from society's point of view. That doesn't mean that your self image is dependent upon money (though it may be), just that where you can go, how well you are accepted, what you can own is all predicated upon labor and therefore earnings. If money is not a factor in your quality of life, as would be the case in a system characterized by "more than enough for all at all times, no labor required" then neither should money be a surrogate for your self-image. There's also a difference not addressed by the simple term "labor": The implication is that you're working for someone else. In an economy of plenty, you can work -- or play, for that matter -- for yourself.
For instance, I already work at home, having essentially retired, presently producing software for the amateur radio community (software defined radio stuff.) I don't charge for it, I give it away, getting my jollies, as it were, from the idea that 8000 or so people are using my software on a more or less regular basis, and also from using it myself, to be honest. My self image, I assure you, is just fine. Likewise, I take a lot of photographs, and I post them at full resolution and welcome anyone who wants to use them, print them, whatever. Doesn't compromise my dignity; doesn't erode my self-image. Finally, I write, and post my opinions and etc. for anyone who wants to read them; I enjoy responding to those who take the time to comment and again, perfectly happy to pursue this without monetary compensation.
All in all, I'd say that if people are not expected to work for others, then they will not suffer negative feelings about themselves if they do not, in fact, work for others. Instead, they can put that effort into improving their own lives and that of their friends and families. I'm rather certain that such undertakings will be quite good for one's self-image, dignity, and social status.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Or as stupid; you see, it's all about the POV you approach it from. Ask me to go mountain climbing for no purpose other than to get to the top? I'd just laugh at you. Tell me you went mountain climbing? I'd either wander directly on to some other subject, or perhaps investigate (recreationally) why you feel it necessary to risk your family and friends losing you over an "accomplishment" that has no actual value to anyone. The world is not improved by your climb, no one is saved, and worst case, you may inspire some other fool to risk their life in a useless fashion similar or identical to yours.
Now, if there's something to be gained -- say, establishing a colony on mars, or discovery of new lands a la the old oceanic explorers -- I'm up for considerable risk. But bragging rights for having done a tough, risky climb to no worthy purpose? Pffft.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
James Albus wrote a book in 1976 called Peoples' Capitalism. He proposed that the government create a mutual fund that invests in automated industries and pays dividends to every US citizen.
Eventually the fund's dividends would be enough to live on, so nobody would be required to work, and everyone would get a minimal share of the proceeds of automating everything.
Imagine that we had started doing this in, say, 1980.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.