Slashdot Mirror
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."
There is already enough wealth to eliminate poverty and inequality. It's just distributed and horded in such a way as that doesn't occur.
No CEO is worth double digit millions of dollars while laying off thousands of employees at the same time to "cut operating costs".
"It's not "distributed", it's earned.
Tell that to the people who actually do the work CREATING the wealth.
while the person who pulls the levers of control is certainly more responsible for the end success or failure of a given enterprise and should be compensated or (punished - LOL, yeah right), it is GROSSLY disproportionate to the reward/punishment of those who actually do what is necessary to create that success or failure.
Even more to the point, if we look at jobs from 50 years ago, about 50% of those no longer exist. Yet we don't have 50% unemployment.
There is another side to that that most people never see. There are people, who had jobs back in the 50s, who would be unemployed and unemployable today. My son falls in that category. He will never be able to drive a car, he will never progress beyond a third grade reading level, and most maths will be beyond him. We have hope he might be able to comprehend and manage his own money, but I doubt it. In the 50s, there were any number of jobs he could have been trained to do. He could have been trained to handle packages at UPS (probably would be nicer to the packages than most handlers these days). He could have gotten a job as a shop assistant, or a job assembling do-dads for some company or other. He wouldn't have made a stellar living, but he'd have done alright for himself. Today, he *might* get something as a simple shop assistant at a convenience store, but only if he learned to count money. He will never make more than minimum wage and more likely he will live his life on the charity of others. Right now, my son is in the 5th percentile. What happens when there are not enough jobs for the people who are in the 20th percentile. Do we expect 20% of the population to live their lives on the charity of others? Do we just expect them to die?
50 years ago, we had nearly full employment because there were any number of luxury items that the lower end of society could not afford because the amount of labor did not allow everything to be built, so the economy was labor limited. Today we are fast approaching the time when the economy is consumption limited (80% of households below the poverty level in the US have big screen TVs). Even the very bottom rung of American society has smart phones. Everyone has almost everything they want that an increase in labor supply could provide. As we move forward, the demand for goods will be lower than the supply of labor needed to produce those goods. Accelerating automation will exacerbate that problem ten fold. One factory owner with a shop full of robots builds product XYZ and has a solid income, but employs zero people. If demand for his product goes up 1000%, he still employs zero people. If one type of product works that way, we say good for the owner, he has an awesome business model. If 50% of the economy works that way, we say economic collapse and civil war.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It's not "distributed", it's earned. Until you understand this, you have nothing to contribute.
Until "earning" CEO pay requires more skill than luck, I'm going to stick with the word distributed.
THIS.
There have been studies investigating whether increased executive pay correlates with better company performance. So far, there's little evidence justifying the massive CEO salaries.
CEOs are essentially random number generators with power. They are mainly hired for the ability to be decisive. Studies consistently show that if company stock value goes up under a CEO, the CEO gets the credit and is praised regardless of how the company is doing internally. If the internal accounting shows progress, the CEO is praised by the board for reform, even if the stock tanks a bit.
And other studies have often shown that there's a problematic delay effect which often occurs with corporate leaders -- if the company isn't growing fast enough, a CEO gets fired, but then there are big gains in the first year under the successor which may be due to policies put in place by the guy who was fired.
And once you get to a certain level in the corporate world, you can't do wrong anymore. Corporations want big gains -- not just moderate ones, but ones that outperform the rest of the market. But not every company can outperform the average (obviously). So corporations NECESSARILY award those who propose more risky policies which could allow performance beyond the mean.
So, that means that someone who gets far up the corporate ladder has often been quite LUCKY. Those who are lucky enough times get promoted, those who don't stay at middle-management levels. And eventually once you hit the top officer positions in the corporation, you don't even get blamed when "your luck runs out." Instead, you get to blame that on underlings, and you wait around for another place for your luck to turn and justify a new promotion.
This isn't speculation -- it happens in a lot of companies. Excessive executive pay is therefore often NOT justified. If all executives were paid a fraction of what they are today, the performance of most corporations and the economy would be essentially unchanged.
Don't get me wrong: there are talented, intelligent people among executives. But do they really add hundreds or even 1000 times (or more) what the lowest-paid workers at the company do? The empirical evidence doesn't support the claim that their skill effect is anywhere near that large.