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Humans Need Not Apply: a Video About the Robot Revolution and Jobs
Paul Fernhout writes: This explanatory compilation video by CGP Grey called "Humans Need Not Apply" on structural unemployment caused by robotics and AI (and other automation) is like the imagery playing in my mind when I think about the topic based on previous videos and charts I've seen. I saw it first on the econfuture site by Martin Ford, author of The Lights in the Tunnel. It is being discussed on Reddit, and people there have started mentioning a "basic income" as one possible response. While I like the basic income idea, I also collect other approaches in an essay called Beyond A Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics. Beyond a basic income for the exchange economy, those possible approaches include gift economy, subsistence production, planned economy, and more — including many unpleasant alternatives like expanding prisons or fighting wars as we are currently doing.
Marshall Brain's writings like Robotic Nation and Manna have inspired my own work. I made my own video version of the concept around 2010, as a parable called "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income." (I also pulled together a lot of links to robot videos in 2009.) It's great to see more informative videos on this topic. CGP Grey's video is awesome in the way he puts it all together.
Marshall Brain's writings like Robotic Nation and Manna have inspired my own work. I made my own video version of the concept around 2010, as a parable called "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income." (I also pulled together a lot of links to robot videos in 2009.) It's great to see more informative videos on this topic. CGP Grey's video is awesome in the way he puts it all together.
If you have an all-robotic workforce, who's going to buy the products they produce?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The main issue with robots, is that they effectively replace human utility with a capital asset. Up until now capitalism has sort of worked because every human was born with a valuable asset that could not be owned or controlled. That is changing fast and our political system is not set up to handle this. It is very sad but capitalism only made it this far because it allowed individual self interest to slightly benefit everyone. This will change that equation and return us to a time where self-interest serves the needs of those who control the wealth.
Those who still have utility value to the economy. In most cases either the very talented/creative or the rich. We are already seeing this in the way that large swathes of population have been effectively excluded from the economy since the recession, while highly skilled sectors are in huge shortage.
Automation is allowing us to abandon people out of the economy with alarming speed.
For once that meme is actually on topic!
I think something like basic income is inevitable. We have it now, it's called Section 8 and food stamps. And as joblessness increases those programs will steadily expand until, well fuck it, just give everybody enough money to buy basic food and housing and be done with it. There's no reason for anybody to go homeless or hungry in America. We pay farmers not to grow food and we have more empty foreclosed-on houses than we have homeless people. There's got to be a way to match that up.
"But teh socialisms!!11!one!1!!" Well, the alternative is teh riotz!!!1!!
The transition is going to be ugly but it's bound to happen. In the meantime, we computer programmer types will be fine until the singularity, and it'll still be quite awhile before robots can fix a busted water pipe so the trades can still provide a living. But transportation? Gone. Manufacturing? Gone. Knowledge work? Gone.
The future will be awesome or terrible.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
In the view of CEOs and super-richs:
The world will be populated by a hundred (or slightly less) of super-rich people, surrounded by thousands and thousands of robots. Around them you will see billions of bones of those who failed to buy private robotic armies to protect them.
But this will be temporary, because shortly after that hundred will turn against each other, after all greed has no limits . They will kill each other as greed commands, and when the last survivor die of old age will be left only the robots.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
As with many overly-optimistic/pessimistic navel-gazes, there are numerous factors which were excluded from consideration in the video.
Beyond the simple fact that we're still quite far away from this post-human productivity apocalypse, considering the current state of the technology, the simple fact of the matter is that it will take a LOT of human physical and mental labor to bring it about. Even then, there will still be a need for humans to plan and make decisions, as well as deal with the exceptions that the machines still won't be able to cope with as yet.
So, while the video may be an interesting take on the subject matter, and it is something that we /should/ be mindful of going forward, I do not believe it is quite the existential threat the video makes it out to be.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
While I'd love the extra time off, reducing human employee's productivity & increasing their cost will only re-enforce the case for replacing them.
Those who still have utility value to the economy. In most cases either the very talented/creative or the rich.
With every industrial revolution new kinds of jobs come to exist. It won't just be engineers and creative geniuses with jobs. Robots can make things, and perform menial labor. They don't provide entertainment, and can't do any sort of work requiring any creativity.
As "things and menial labor" become fully automated, they simply become a small part of a very large economy, an economy that has shifted farther up the hierarchy of needs. We'll all be employed still, helping one another solve our "first world problems".
Don't like the way your apartment is decorated? You'll be able to afford to pay someone for that, since "things and menial labor" are so cheap. Confused by all your choices for wall screens and theater-quality sound systems, and don't know how to hook them up? You'll be able to afford to pay someone for that, since "things and menial labor" are so cheap. All the spa/beauty services that are luxuries today? You'll be able to afford to pay someone for that, since "things and menial labor" are so cheap.
There's already a very broad array of non-menial services available to the rich. As with every previous tech revolution, stuff available only to the rich becomes available to everyone. A century or so ago automation didn't destroy the world, because everyone could suddenly afford shoes and tableware and chairs and all sorts of stuff that used to be luxuries. After this revolution we'll all be keeping each other busy providing non-menial services to one another, not as servants but peer-to-peer (much as the culture of Lyft/Uber is different from traditional Taxis, though that particular job's life is limited by coming automation).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We've already tried that. Hoover after the 1929 crash let the free market work on its own. After 3 years of worsening depression, the people wanted a New Deal.
Before, in 1837, van Buren continued Jackson's policy against a US Bank. Again, a prolonged recession led to his one-term presidency.
The free market is the problem. It does not care about the General Welfare. The market is quite happy to let poor people suffer. Government is mandated to provide for the vulnerable.
We have not had 'industrial revolution' for all that long, so assuming that everything will work out and new jobs will be created is not that safe. The whole point of the argument was that as robots improve they will displace more and more jobs without creating sufficient new ones. It also pointed out that the 'new economy' jobs that have been created over the last few decades make up a small percentage of the workforce while the largest job types right now are ones that people are trying to develop automatic systems to replace them.
It should also be noted that historical cases did not go very well. They tended to produce a certain number of middle class benefits and significant upper class benefits, but with each leap forward poverty becomes a bigger and bigger problem. While the middle class dominates forums like this, we are not the whole population and stuff that benefits us can have consequences elsewhere... and every year there are fewer and fewer people in the middle class. So in the next big leap, a non-trivial percentage of us middle class people will end up dropping below the poverty line. A few will move up into upper middle class or even upper class, and they will look around and talk about how wonderful things have gotten, but others will not be so fortunate.