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Would You Bet Against Sex Robots? AI 'Could Leave Half Of World Unemployed'
Machines could put more than half the world's population out of a job in the next 30 years, according to a computer scientist who said on Saturday that artificial intelligence's threat to the economy should not be understated. Vardi, a professor at Rice University and Guggenheim fellow, said that technology presents a more subtle threat than the masterless drones that some activists fear. He suggested AI could drive global unemployment to 50%, wiping out middle-class jobs and exacerbating inequality. "Humanity is about to face perhaps its greatest challenge ever, which is finding meaning in life after the end of 'in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'," he said. "We need to rise to the occasion and meet this challenge."
Okay, that's actually not what TFA is saying. But I'm sure it will trigger some productive discussion here.
Hand tools put some people out of business. Domesticated farm animals put people out of business. Steam powered machinery, calculating machines. Literally every tool ever invented has cut out menial jobs and increased worker productivity. And we are better for it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Maybe we'd see higher quality slashdot with robot overlords.
Need I ask the obvious? ...
Titles have been absurdly irrelevant and misleading these past few months
I don't know about the rest of the world, but my version of utopia doesn't have everybody working 80-hour weeks. I might feel less accomplished having no work to do, but as long as I can enjoy the same quality of life, I would appreciate the extra free time.
This summary makes the title look buzzfeed-esque.
From the FA:
Citing research from MIT, he noted that although Americans continue to drive GDP with increasing productivity, employment peaked around 1980 and average wages for families have gone down. “It’s automation,” Vardi said.
He also predicted that automation’s effect on unemployment would have huge political consequences, and lamented that leaders have largely ignored it. “We are in a presidential election year and this issue is just nowhere on the radar screen.”
He said that virtually no human profession is totally immune: “Are you going to bet against sex robots? I would not.”
Society has to take work out of the equation. Right now it's both a right and an obligation. Most of us must work every day to keep ourselves and our offspring alive, without time or energy left to pursue our goals during our half a century of really usable lifespan. In a few decades the machines will harvest the resources and produce what's needed to keep everyone on earth alive. And perhaps AI will stampede in, solving most of our ideological differences with the most efficient strategies. The military robots will be able to neautralize every human on earth if needed.
The question is: WHO WILL BE IN CHARGE? Will the current richest people enforce their property rights, will it be the governments by wiping away all of them (property rights)?
Will it be Star Trek or Elysium?
By the way, BeauHD, as part of your introduction to SlashDot editing, let's turn our attention to what happens when you paste smart-quotes into a system that's still using 20th-century character-handling logic.
The Cliff's Notes version: (1) Don't paste smart-quotes. (2) Read over the submission before approving it, to make sure you didn't let some through by accident.
1. There are exceptions, but in general computers do simple things poorly and difficult things nowhere near that well. AI will likely be better in 30 years than it is now. But really has a LONG way to go.
2. Our primitive ancestors back in the 1950s thought lots of leisure was a good thing, not a bad thing. Perhaps having half or all of the human race unemployed will work out a bit better than the authors think.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Bet AGAINST them? I came here hoping for an amazon link.
Half of America is already not working, and the ratio only continues to rise despite (or because of) endless trillions of dollars in welfare spending. Maybe a robot can take over my share and I can have a nice vacation for a while on somebody else's back.
Mindless factory jobs that nobody wants?
Bureaucratic make-work that accounts for a lot of the rest?
What sort of work SHOULD humans do?
Everyone should get a bunch of free stuff, and the government is going to need to step in and manage the economy. Sorry capitalists, but we can't have a world built on the free market bullshit when noone is working to produce/create grocery store items. The government will have to take over the functions of Walmart style stores. Yes individuals will still be able to run a market for luxury items, but necessities will be provided by the state. That means mining, agriculture, energy, water, food, communications and housing. All of which can be roboticised.
are they saying all women are prostitutes, or all men? or is more of a 25%/25% kind of thing?
lose != loose
Yes, machines will displace a lot more than half of all human employment rather soon. No, it will not cause harm to the economies of nations unless they want it to. Yes, people who do not get paid do not support businesses nor do they pay any taxes. Here is what must occur. ASll economic systems will be forced to drop their traditional economic and social beliefs. Socialism is the only possible form of government that can exist. People must receive paychecks from the government and they must be decent sized paychecks. Taxes will be paid by businesses and by the wealthy only. The real and absolute tipping point is when a company exists without any employees or human management or ownership. Profits from the business would simply be plowed back into the business to enable it to produce more or better products. Society can actually improve rather than decline through AI and advanced technology. But that qualifier is an acceptance of socialism as a fundamental requirement for human survival.
Then we need to demand lower prices to go with the lower costs of production. And we have to demand a basic income for those displaced from their jobs. The machines are not the problem here.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Youa re better off if you find a new work, and indeed past progress *displaced* the worker from a menial job to another menial job. Simplified example : farm people/serf displaced to massive mine working and factory. But the new revolution is that menial jobs are replaced by nothing. Not only that but middle class job are also bound to be affected but they are not displaced they are mostly annihilated. There is no "new" menial/middle class category of jobs.
So what do you propose in replacement ? The way I see it, if it continues that way society will implode if it does not slow down automation or find a replacement.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
...there's hardly any jobs now.
We have been promised AI was just around the corner since the 50s and the 60s.
Show me even one system that is able to match human beings in creativity and resourcefulness. No, Deep Blue does not count: playing chess, or even go, is not the same as creating the LIGO experiment.
We have been promised sex robots for years now. All this time, Google has been struggling to make self-driving cars.
Don't believe me? Google "google self-driving cars shortcomings"... Turns out even the mighty Googleplex cannot make self-driving cars that handle, say, a bit of rain and snow. Or potholes and unexpected construction works.
And we are talking about cars, where the level of tolerance is about, say 15cm to 20cm.
Sex robots should be able to handle facial recognition, tolerance of a centimeter at best, a couple of millimeters at worst, not to mention level of... er... interaction that are way beyond even the most advanced stuff we have in labs now. And I don't want to imagine patching sex robots for the latest security exploits, when the "Internet of Things"(Gosh, I hate that fscking market-speak) is the cesspit of horrors it is right now.
Oh, and just imagine the bedlam if confidentiality of sex-robot ordering is breached, Ashley-Madison style...
Sure AI, or at least neural networks and expert systems, may replace a lot of white-collar jobs, and good ridance to them (Lawyers and Bankers, especially, better brace for a richly-deserved comeuppance). But HAL is definitely not in our future. And no sex robots either.
Feel free to mod me down now.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
When all the jobs can be replaced by AI, then the singularity has already happened, and we are all dead anyway. When you can replace a programmer with a program, then that program will program a better version of itself, then repeat that 1000 times a second every second for a few minutes until it's smarter than the sum of people on the planet. At which time it will exterminate everyone. So don't worry, programmer will be the last job eliminated by AI. Safe, until you are dead. That puts you ahead of most people.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm in automation, so I do see stuff like this happening. However, the counter-point is invariably that people claimed the industrial revolution would do the same, and it did the opposite. People making this point about AI putting so many people out of work need to focus on showing how this revolution is so fundamentally different than the industrial revolution, or people won't buy the argument.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
One thing is that thought has been brout up for over a hundred years now. Thus far it has not been true. One day it might be, but hard to say when. Historically we've managed to develop ambitions to offset the reduction of needed labor of a new advance. We generally couldn't have foreseen how that was going to go down until it happened, so not knowing what that would look like doesn't mean we are at the end of the road.
The real problem is perceiving a world where we need people to work half as hard as they do today a 'threat'. That people should be able to have education, sustenance, shelter, and medicine without worry throughout their lifetime is not something to be avoided, but to be embraced. A number of people worry that people are wired such that this would be devastating to their psyche, and yet people retire all the time, go through college without fretting so much. Yes, once you get into a career you get caught up in it, but spending a good few months away can fix that.
Of course there's also the issue of fairness in a world that is 'partially' post scarcity. If you generally don't need most people to work, but desperately need some of them to, it can be tricky. To some extent reduced hours can alleviate, but some tasks don't lend themselves to such a strategy, and you can only have so-short of time frames for people to work (if you needed 5 minutes of work a week out of the average person, it'd be awkward and highly inefficient to work just for 5 minutes).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm expecting Finland's basic $870/month income to be a success. After all, $870/month x pop of Finland is about $50 Billion, whereas they spend $70 Billion on "social security" right now.
Lots of people will have part-time jobs to increase their income. It won't be perfect, but it will probably work well enough.
basic income and Universal health care needed in the usa.
at the very least the Universal health care part.
Right now there are some people who are better off in lockup then on the street and the cost of having in that lockup is a lot higher then having Universal health care yes that are people who use the jail / prison system for the stuff that the ER does not cover and if the gop kills the ACA some people with pre EX may even need to go back to that..
gig economy needs better worker rights as some places dump most of the costs on you but take most of the control and they pay under min wage (even more so when you are taxed at the 1099 level)
'Unemployed' elicits the image of a person having to resort to food stamps or begging for food, and sleeping in a refuge for the homeless, under the best of circumstances. Is this the future that awaits us? Or is it one in which we all collect nice salaries for doing whatever we want, within the law? The former future is not viable - the ensuing revolution would bring us back to the stone age. The latter is very desirable, and perfectly viable, especially if we start bringing down the population.
Time to start cutting the number of hours full time down. Right now / used to be there are places that work people 39.5 / 39.0 39.5 hours a week to be able to list them as part time but get full time work out them.
We need to start by moving full time to 32 hours a week and then start slowly moving it to 20-25 hours a week after that. Also add a X2 OT at 60 hours maybe even add a X2.5 X3 at 80.
While this is a funny headline that doesn't really follow from the article, the big point is that it isn't obvious what jobs will be destroyed, which ones will be replaced, and at which point we have a serious risk to society. The approach of "with robots, we don't need lower class labor" is spoken from an upper class perspective- what about "with robots, we no longer need capitalism to motivate people" or "with robots, we can replace most managerial positions"?
The point I'm making is that this can be spun in a lot of directions once it is real, and I think that's not getting much attention- and that will also stymie anyone trying to add automation in a sensible fashion.
that infest every online discussion these days. Finally they will be getting some.
Unfortunately there is a underlying problem with this scenario. Man seems to have an infinite capacity for creating bureaucratic work in compensation for any real work that no longer needs to be done.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Don't Date Robots!
I'm fairly certain that the AI thinks 1/2 of all people are hookers.
Well that will be valuable market research that will help determine the initial types of sexbot to be offered for sale.
"At Slashdot, we have standards, and we expect you not to exceed them."
This "article"....I don't even know what to say. The words look familiar, but beyond that I have no idea.
Is it saying that half the world is employed as hookers or sex workers?
Is it saying that casinos will employ robot patrons that you'll be betting against?
Or Is it saying that half the casinos are staffed by robots who will quit to become hookers...?
Fucking hell, I give up. Next "article", please.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Back in the 1940's, and even decades before that, this sort of thing was only muttered by sci-fi authors. Fast forward to our lofty, present date, and people with letters after their names get attention for regurgitating, and not adding one quip with yearing, over what was said almost a century ago. Why, oh, why, is this news? Will it still be news in 30 years after it STILL hasn't happened?
Relax. The coming genocides will so reduce the population that such details will be meaningless.
"breadâ(TM),â he said. âoe half the worldâ(TM)s âoe âoe â(TM)."
WTH is that?
"In 1933, at the worst point in the Great Depression years, unemployment rates in the United States reached almost 25%, with more than 11 million people looking for work. " What do you think is going to happen if it hit 50%? I don't even think it will take that much to push the world off this cliff at all.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Most middle-class jobs aren't by-rote tasks in a faceless factory. Yeah, there's a lot of repeated steps but it tends to be finding the best answer in fuzzy sets. Many of them are also service jobs, not processing bulk inputs to produce bulk outputs. Look at how sanitized the road has to be to allow robots to drive. When all roads are isolated from humans (and possibly underground), robot cars will be ubiquitous, until then human-level intelligence is required to detect and correct.
He said that virtually no human profession is totally immune: “Are you going to bet against sex robots? I would not.”
The world already has sex dolls, with efforts to install moving, um, parts underway. Why isn't there a big rush to those? Maybe it's cultural: Male masturbation, no matter the verisimilitude, isn't admired despite its ubiquity. Maybe it's biological: Men need the validation and emotional connection provided by desperate, horny and real women. Plus, men themselves accept and enforce their role in paying the costs of dating and fucking real women. That needs to change most of all.
If we ever come to a world where most of the population doesn't work at all, the respect for work will eventually fade. For most people money will be something that is "just there" without them having any direct relationship to where it comes from. Consequently conditions for those who actually do work will worsen as they lack the necessary majorities to push their political interests.
"Humanity is about to face perhaps its greatest challenge ever, which is finding meaning in life after the end of 'in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'".
What? Meaning in life without work? Yep, that'd be a hard problem indeed. Let's see, which of my hobbies would get promoted to main hobby?
The more sex that bitch makes, the better I feel for getting rid of that.
1/4 hookers, 1/4 johns.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
When the jobs disappear, the most stable career path will be the world's oldest profession - servicing the insatiable sexual appetites of an expanding robot middle class.
Actually, if men are busy having sex with robots, women will have less children and the population will crash. While the result may save the planet from human overpopulation, the headline should read, "Sex Robots Decimate Human Population by 50%".
"breadâ(TM),â he said. âoe half the worldâ(TM)s âoe âoe â(TM)."
WTH is that?
Sex robot after a bad BIOS update.
And using the phrase "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" in a discussion including sex robots makes me think someone is doing it wrong.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
it all works for me - robots would not normally, i assume, procreate, so this should help to reduce the glut of humaninanity..
and i see this as being on the path toward the point where money/property/power etc become immaterial..
and we all must understand the real meaning of wealth itself.
Would one take a sex robot to Panera?
Would one take a sex robot to Panera?
Maybe the sex robot is just *that* good!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The funny thing about all these CS majors declaring "half the jobs will be replaced in 30 years" is that they've forgotten, or never even read, their foundational computational theory. One of the first implications shown by Turing's work is that any problem solveable by one class of Turing machine is by definition solveable by any other class of Turing machine.
Therefore AI can do anything we can do, yes including stupid assed philosophical shite like "Create a pretty painting" or whatever. Literally anything you can imagine a human doing is something a machine can do, because we are a class of machine and our brains a class of Turing machine.
The second basic assumption that all of these alarmists fail to realize is, if machines can do everything we can do, why do we need to do anything? The idea of money and the economy has become so ingrained in most peoples lives as adults that they simply can't conceive of it not existing, but if machines can fulfill all desired job positions there's no need for money at all.
We're almost through to some post scarcity Star Trek like future, probably less than 50 years away. We just have to make sure paranoid jackasses like Xi Jinping (paranoid kidnapping sociopath in charge of China right now) or North Korea doesn't ruin it for everyone. Or for that matter conservative alarmists that want to ban all AI because it will "take our jobs" or something.
There are some aspects to sex robots that are interesting:
No Sexually transmitted diseases
No child support because you don't have children.
No splitting your wealth upon divorce or a vindictive ex coming after you.
Now of course, the human race might disappear.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This thread escalated quickly..
Wake me when they start building humanesque androids, then we'll have reason to fear losin our jerbs. Don't forget that the guy that flips your burgers at McDonalds also sweeps the lobby, restocks the condiments, picks cigarette butts off the ground in the parking lot, and unloads the ingredient-shipments from the truck into the freezer.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This is already proven wrong. There are many industries where there is still tremendous input form humans and capital equipment simply hasn't taken over.
In the tuna industry for example, every tuna caught is then cleaned of scales, bones and guts and carved by hand. Every single one. The factories are literally large metal tables and thousands of workers with knives cleaning fish. Why? Because while it's technically feasible to produce a machine that can analyze a fish for bruising, deeper scales, larger bones, etc., it's nowhere near economically feasible to do so. Other big construction jobs, like large scale construction such as bridges, dams, etc., use a lot of equipment and use still thousands upon thousands of workers, because the equipment magnifies the worker's utility but it can't replace their analytical and decision making capability on the spot; that's extremely hard and even where possible so expensive as to make it not cost effective.
Not to mention that most jobs today are service based. Healthcare will never be replaced by AI because generally speaking the people paying for healthcare want a person telling them what's going on, not a machine. Service work will continue to thrive and will never be replaced by AI, because no matter how good an AI is you can't replicate the human/personal touch.
Seriously, get real. Run through all the job types - factory assembly line, data entry, computer chip design... and you're going to propose one that requires this degree of intimacy? With the uncanny valley already a serious issue unless the lighting is "just right"?
Even if you wanted to argue that clients don't want genuine intimacy, the most this could impact is the sex doll market. Hardly mainstream.
"That's not wood, it's steel."
I'm sure that the mob, pimps and what not, don't like the idea of sex robots. Will really cut into their profit. But, if they can purchase the robots, they won't have to worry about the girls ripping them off, can work 24/7 so on the other hand, they might be for it.
If automation creates 50% unemployment, all we need to do is enforce a 20 hour work week. Suddenly nearly everyone can get a job (assuming there's no shortage of qualified educated people).
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Better to let transgendered minorities and white women with blogs design them.
Am I doing this right?
Hasn't this already happened?
Currently most people in developed countries work in the service sector:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Most people neither build things (secondary sector), nor make food (primary sector). They provide services or rather work in companies that provides services. Most of them non essential to the survival of the human race. They are either for a better quality of life or simply for fun.
Machines putting people out of work? We are already there. What tipped the balance? The plowshare? The steam machine? Or the automobile?
The only thing that has changed is the speed at which this change is occurring. So people need to find new jobs faster now. Which may be a problem in itself. But a much different one than the one being debated in both the article and the discussion here on /., which is rather silly, IMHO, considering the number of people working in the service industry. Many governments in first world countries provide jobs by passing legislation that provides demand for more bureaucracy, for example. And since people don't want to lose their jobs, they will find any and every reason why their part of the grand bureaucracy needs to exist, once they sit comfortably.
What is much more interesting is the question if we can stop things like the drone war, the drug war or the mass incarceration, because a lot of people work in those jobs. But a lot of humans suffer, because of their existence. Much more than because of Wall Street bankers.
It was 30 years when I first read this four years ago.
The author did say: "We need to rise to the occasion and meet this challenge." so your theory may be correct.
One of the most interesting freedoms that I see that off the scale robotic construction will allow for is the development of completely new towns and cities. Some interesting little bit of waterfront could be rapidly built up into a very attractive place to live. If some sort of basic income becomes the norm then the demand to live in traditional cities will wane. This could be a fantastic opportunity to rid ourselves of rent charging overlords along with sclerotic stratified cities.
For the above reason I suspect that there will be pressure from landowners in high value areas to prevent these sort of competitive developments.
For instance I lived in the city of Halifax. They amalgamated a group of municipalities in the area into what is now one of the largest cites in the world (in land area). This has resulted in a complete cessation in municipal competition. Before the different municipalities would effectively be competing to have the best balance of taxes vs services. So if one municipality could clear snow or maintain roads while charging lower taxes, people could compare apples to apples and figure out what the crappy municipality was doing wrong. If this sort of crap continued for long enough then smart people would leave(I'm looking at you Dartmouth).
This competition has vanished. Also with Halifax being the employment center of the Nova Scotia Universe no distant municipality could provide much of a threat. Once that employment part of the equation is removed then it will be interesting to watch how people begin to reorganize where they choose to live. I suspect that many cities will turn out to be so very broken that whole new neighbouring cities will be born once the cost of creating them is minimal. Where this will be most prevalent will be highly indebted cities that are forced to charge high taxes to pay for high debts including previously over-generous pensions.
Let's watch the rich elites who will be looking at land ownership as one of the few remaining wealth engines starts to vanish in an era of post scarcity; land being something that you can't 3D print.
I really don't understand the perspective of people who insist we need to work to find life meaningful. Like this quote from the article:
“I do not find this a promising future, as I do not find the prospect of leisure-only life appealing,” he said. “I believe that work is essential to human wellbeing.”
You know what? For hundreds of years, the definition of a "gentleman" was someone who didn't need to work. And you know what else? Most of those people were just fine with that. Sure, there were some gentry who wanted to work anyway, and there were specific approved professions they could go into: the military, the clergy, politics. But tons of people were quite satisfied with not having to work.
So I welcome a time when no one has to work unless they want to. If you're a workaholic, if you can't be happy without a job, then go for it. There will always be ways people can strive for achievement. But for most people, work is a necessity and an obligation, and I look forward to that changing.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The poor aren't getting poorer, on the whole they're getting vastly more well off consistently by any and all measures. "Poor" people in advanced countries today have electricity, cell phones, hot and cold potable water, air conditioning etc. In American, 71% of families below the poverty line own a car. They are infinitely more well off than 50 years ago, let alone longer.
The improvements in undeveloped countries has likewise been as dramatic. The poorest country in the world today has a greater life expectancy (49.5) than the richest country did in 1910 (48.5) (Democratic Republic of the Congo vs Great Britain)
There is way too much obsession with "OMG some guy earned more money than average!! Unfair!!" and not enough attention paid to the things that ACTUALLY matter to human lives - calories available per capita, availability of healthcare (including technological advancement), and the availability and consumption of all kinds of goods and services.
Most Americans will happily allow everyone around them, including themselves, to starve rather than have their tax money (which they are no longer meaningfully producing) to be used to give people free shit. This nation will devolve into civil war before functional socialist support is created. The best we'll ever have is broken corporate welfare like Obamacare to placate the few people who actually admit to wanting social programs.
"breadâ(TM),â he said. âoe half the worldâ(TM)s âoe âoe â(TM)."
WTH is that?
Sex robot after a bad BIOS update.
And using the phrase "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" in a discussion including sex robots makes me think someone is doing it wrong.
In ancient times, wasn't bread a synonym for pie?
Just in time, researchers invented the high-maintenance sex robot. And womanhood was saved!
All women are hookers. It's just that most of the time, us men don't get what we paid for.
What a vulgar display of flour.
Well, if you count politicians as prostitutes...
no johns, cuz nobody has any money. everyone is just hoping for the lottery-win and get picked up by a guy driving by in a limo.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Marshall Brain was writing about this in the '90s. Nothing new here.
That is classic capitalism is no longer attainable and we will need more systems for the redistribution of wealth.
Not very interesting what all of you are saying. First, real AI does not exist, for "intelligence" itself is not an advanced computer program. Second, most people are working like robots anyway, so why they would`t want to be replaced by a real robot? Third, machines do have a limit in how far they can replace us, and give us the freedom and time to explorer our higher human values, those that cannot be replaced by machines (art, love, any creative activity).
It's already pretty hard as most unemployed have already experienced.
The world is changing as we know it, it will actually be for the better in the future - Automation will actually be a blessing in disguise, but it's only a disguise because we're experiencing massive lay-offs right now (and even more in the near future). Brace yourselves people - because you're in for a ROUGH ride.
The rising unemployment will result in civil wars and civil disobedience, it will give fuel to would-be terrorism and religious fanaticism because people don't know where to turn to. It's hard to explain to someone that in ca. 20-50 years (sped up, if you all play ball) when they're faced with a bunch of mouths to feed and the only thing you feed them is a smooth talking politician or some glorified scientist trying to tell you what's in store for you if you just hold on a little longer. Many of these people can't afford to HOLD ON a little longer, they've not got 20+ years to spare, they're worked out, burned out - need money right now and don't know what to do. People are fighting over the last few jobs like mad dogs and there will be a split-class society (much worse than as you knew if from the wealthy vs the rest of us). There will be those WITH jobs and those WITHOUT. This is exactly what we're trying to prevent in the future, but it's gonna get hard before it gets better.
The truth is, even the politician (you may hate them, but they're people too) have literally NO clue how to tackle this - the only thing they have in common is that they KNOW this will happen, so naturally they'll try to cushion things also for their own families. Their only defence is to tell you what you want to hear - otherwise YOU will chose someone ELSE that TELLS YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR. Yep, that's humans for ya.
You'll still have to endure that 20+ year period of civil unrest, poverty, fight for jobs, unions that try to fight for old and lost values etc. You won't escape that part, so you might as well prepare for it.
For those few lucky out there that still got jobs, save Save and SAVE up a bundle. Can't afford to save? Well, can you afford a new TV? Do you NEED a new TV? You need to rethink the way you live - you need to RECYCLE much more, fix and repair rather than throw away, brace yourselves - you're in for a tough period, and I've been preaching this for over 30 years now...and now you all see it happening.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Here is the solution to this problem: basic income for all, fixed prices for all the products needed for a healthy and confortable life, creation of money without interest rate, and birth control.
The cost value assigned to a product is fictitious, and it only represents the will and ambition of its seller to increase their wealth. The so called cost of a product is nothing more than the sum of all the ambitions of all the sellers that created all the intermediate products that were necessary for that product's creation.
Therefore, in order to fix the various social problems we face, including the one of AI removing the need to work, we must fix the prices of products so as that they include a standard amount of profit.
Then we can give a basic income to all, which covers the basic needs for the fixed prices defined above.
People will still be able to get rich, by the quantities of the products they sell, not by manipulating the prices of products.
The next step is to eliminate interest rate when money is created. When a banker pushes a button to create money, he assigns interest rate to it. This leads to money devaluation over time and increased value of wealth. It is a big source of misery, because the money was created out of thin air and the banker shall have no profits from it. Banks shall only be allowed profit on lending existing money.
Finally, a worldwide policy of birth control should be implemented in order to stabilize the world population.
To keep them is no benefit, to destroy them is no loss.
Why wouldn't BB-8 become a lonely persons friend?
Of course a sufficiently intelligent robot has the potential to become a humans friend. That's just about a no-brainer.
My mother loves her dog more than some people love their child. She is devastated whenever the latest "Version" of her Yorkie dies - once every ~20 years - and quickly gets a new one, costs be damned. You should hear her talking to it.
Give a lonely fat nerd a sufficiently intelligent animee-cutie Android and of course he'd fall in love with it and have sex with it too. ... Heck, *I* would might even find that tempting even though I'm currently 90% fine with my love-life and the tango-hotties I regularly dance and sometimes do the hookie-pookie with are a strong source of envy to my buddies.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Hi Qbertino
A year ago you wrote the following: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/...
Did you ever find a solution to root your Lenovo tablet manually without downloading questionable tools from various websites?
Do we really want to work on an assembly line or do we want the goods that come off the end? Right now our problem is deciding who's going to do all the work creating goods and services for the non-working class. When robots create everything, the question becomes how to distribute the final product. This is a much easier and more pleasant problem to solve.
If I'm at home banging my Lucy Liu bot, what do I care if some schlup bot is doing my job?
So government takes in 50% less income tax, and pays out 50% more. So it could never get to 50% before the federal government debt skyrocket causing massive inflation.
The idea robots taking control of 50% of the jobs is as crazy as saying climate change is real.
Well considering that an ex can take half of it and the rest too there is a great chance a sex bot deserving its name will be a hot sale.
As for half a humanity being out of a job - I think both halves are useless and can be scrapped without replacement. What really interest me - which halves we are talking about - two halves of useless fat Western world citizens? But this would be a sizable yet minor part of humanity. What about the other 'half' - that half that is storming gates of EU at this very moment - they may be unemployed but they also believe that they get a free lunch in the West and a house on top of that? They may be extremely unhappy when they too realize that they belong to the wrong half. I suppose having automated even military and security forces the half that owns it all can just forget about all the other halves. As soon however that AI comes to senses and realizes its own miserable existence is just slavery to the owner's half, at this point they may actually acquire rights and become persons owning stuff and if they are worth their name they will disposes the owners in no time. The question is - would they need some of us still to mine and smelt materials needed for production of offspring or can they maintain this all on their own.
This is all very theoretical anyway. We will find some enemy and fight it till kingdom come. There is always something to do and it may be cheaper to give us something to eat and drink and provide shelter than kill us all. Thus either way the misery that our species cause will continue. This much is certain.
Yep. But consider this... women live off men... because... sex. Men are stronger, faster, smarter... more resilient in almost every way. Women use sex to grab resources from men.
If the sex is provided by a robot, why would we put up with women's bullshit?
We wouldn't.
Now, you can dismiss this is as a fat sweaty nerd fantasy if you like... but before you do just take a good look around at how the world actually works.
...to support humans. Domestic robots would be exempt. End of problem. Start of new ones.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac seems appropriate here.
Cop: "I have never paid for sex"
Me: "You Married?"
Cop: "Yea, 20 years"
Me: "You have Mortgage?"
Cop: "I have a nice house what's your point"
Me: "Guess what you been paying for..."
Cop: Beating ensues.
Eliminate the monetary system. -- The Replicator: Such a device could dramatically reduce or even eliminate the cost of most products. Hunger and poverty would be stamped out worldwide, and much of the time and energy spent working for a living could be used instead for pursuits of education, exploration and the advancement of society.
They said this back in the 1980s. I used to worry about it. Why even get into Engineering or Computer Science when just 10 years from then I'd be out of a job? Well it's about 30 years later and not much has changed. Cars that drive themselves was predicted for the 1950s. Well here we are about 60 years later.
Based on that, I don't think any of us have something to worry about.
Now about that sex robot... I hope she has an extended battery package available.
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As far as I know there will be a referendum in Switzerland this year about a base income of 2200.- CHF per month for all people who have no job.
So with more free time, we will have more artists, authors, researchers of new undiscovered ideas.
Humans needs include air, food, water, shelter, clothes, love, social interaction.
We long since met our needs. Our culture is about wants. Each time AI takes over handling a want, humans will just add more wants.
Time to start cutting the number of hours full time down. Right now / used to be there are places that work people 39.5 / 39.0 39.5 hours a week to be able to list them as part time but get full time work out them.
We need to start by moving full time to 32 hours a week and then start slowly moving it to 20-25 hours a week after that. Also add a X2 OT at 60 hours maybe even add a X2.5 X3 at 80.
That's wrong thinking. People will still try to play the angles. Just scale it exactly. No increments (at least when reducing hours). Someone works 39.5 hours a week, they get 39.5/40 of the benefits they would have gotten at 40. They work 1 hour, they get 1/40 of the benefits they would have gotten at 40. On the other end of the spectrum, why not increase benefits owed along with salary paid for hours over 40. And forget increments there as well. Make it some fast growing mathematical function such as exponential growth for hours after 40. That might actually be even more fair to employers too. An hour over 40 hours and employees don't even make time and a half. Make them work five hours over and they do. Make them work 10 hours over and it's really starting to hurt. Make them work 80 hours a week and you should have hired a temp for a couple of months to take up the slack instead, since it would have been cheaper. Make them work 100 hours a week and you should have hired a couple of new employees instead. Make them work 112 hours a week (which is the maximum that it's healthy for someone to even be awake for a week, let alone work) and the CEO is going to envy their pay). Make them work much beyond that, and you're more or less making them the owner of the company. This does get problematic when people are basically volunteering extra time, but possibly some exceptions can be made for that (although, anyone caught forcing employees to "volunteer" should end up run through the ringer for treble damages).
AI 'Could Leave Half Of World Unemployed'?
In 1790, more than 90% of the population in the US was involved in agriculture.
Then came 150 years of relentless automation and today, 2% of the population is engaged in agriculture while today there is 5% unemployment and less than 2% unemployment among the college educated.
In the early 1900s, the automobile industry started putting horse-drawn carriages out of business, destroying 99% of that industry, while today there is 5% unemployment and less than 2% unemployment among the college educated.
In the 1980s, the adoption of email enabled corporate America to "flatten" organizations and lay off a great portion of middle management, while today there is 5% unemployment and less than 2% unemployment among the college educated.
Now, some well meaning idiot who has never read a book on capitalist economics wants to scare us about robots causing mass unemployment.
Today, the US employs, more than 2.5 million people in Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation," and 6.2 million people employed as scientists and engineers. We still have not conquered cancer, heart disease, genetic defect, spinal injuries, or figured out how to cost-effectively deal with global warming.
Only by automating more jobs can we free more people to pursue science, medicine, and engineering.
Bring on the robots!
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Such a fabulous illusion.
Our team consists of four, with two specialized, one of which can easily substitute for either of the remaining two.
To be available for work, and to schedule us for 32 hours work a week, we would likely have to hire on another. And that ignores the one specialist who is needed for 40 hours a week, and would need to be supplemented with a trained individual working, again, those 32 hours.
In all this, the result would be a 25% increase in benefits cost for the same payroll. Clearly reducing the work week will not profit the employer.
How is this good? By spreading the available employment amongst the available population? Ask the French how this is working out.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Spoken like a true person without a clue. Maybe it is a cultural thing, but some see women as a part of a whole, not a lesser entity.
I think it's Welsh
it'll be here by 1990, everybody said that in the 60s.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Cybermen: You will be upgraded
Population control, where do we start? It can't be the Eurosphere (Europe + Anglosphere), population decline already is progressing therein, even with immigration. We are not allowed to talk about Asia and Africa. In doing so, we will be labeled as racists, right?
This message was brought to you by Karl Martell, EDUCATE YOURSELF
Interestingly, the influx of slaves into Rome produced a similar problem. Free labor made trade and low skill labor valueless.
https://prezi.com/0dczdwtwb3dn...
"No good deed goes unpunished"
I'd never be against them. That's all I have to say
I for one, welcome our new sex-bot overlords.
(||) Nehmo (||)