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Are Gates, Musk Being 'Too Aggressive' With AI Concerns? (xconomy.com)
gthuang88 reports on a talk titled "Will Robots Eat Your Job?"
Bill Gates and Elon Musk are sounding the alarm "too aggressively" over artificial intelligence's potential negative consequences for society, says MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson. The co-author of The Second Machine Age argues it will take at least 30 to 50 years for robots and software to eliminate the need for human laborers. In the meantime, he says, we should be investing in education so that people are prepared for the jobs of the future, and are focused on where they still have an advantage over machines -- creativity, empathy, leadership, and teamwork.
The professor acknowledges "there are some legitimate concerns" about robots taking jobs away from humans, but "I don't think it's a problem we have to face today... It can be counterproductive to overestimate what machines can do right now." Eventually humankind will reach a world where robots do practically everything, the professor believes, but with a universal basic income this could simply leave us humans with more leisure time.
The professor acknowledges "there are some legitimate concerns" about robots taking jobs away from humans, but "I don't think it's a problem we have to face today... It can be counterproductive to overestimate what machines can do right now." Eventually humankind will reach a world where robots do practically everything, the professor believes, but with a universal basic income this could simply leave us humans with more leisure time.
So making your silly lists of rules means nothing.
what jobs? Trump might "bring the jobs back", but robots will fill them.
just what our stupid species needs, more free time.
Think of the latter days of the Roman empire, or the decadent jet-setting playboys and heiresses of today scouting for a kitchen designer for the latest vacation home. That's a terrible life. And I'll bet we'll soon have pills and superfoods that will replace the need for stressful physical workouts to maintain robust health.
Why do Trump supporters want their daughters grabbed by the pussy?
what jobs? Trump might "bring the jobs back", but robots will fill them.
Then what's the point of immigration? Why open borders to allow an influx of economic immigrants and refugees from war-torn countries if, as it generally seems to be the consensus of the intelligentsia, robots will replace any possible jobs available to them in just 50 or so years from now?
Here are some of the jobs Trump will bring to America. Notice an important detail about where the workers are coming from, and Trump's explanation.
Ai will be our natural successor; here, evolution takes a twist.
And the sweet irony is that it will be done by or own hands, and it's probably inevitable...
We are going the way of the Neanderthal...
Well, not really, Neanderthals got to breed with sapiens, and are now living in Europe/Asia, we will never breed with machines...
Where the fuck is John Connor?
There's no better revelation of their arrogance than their belief that something like an artificial intelligence can, in the long-run, be managed.
It is rarely the case that your better fed, better educated, more skilled children will do anything but exceed your control.
Because we have zero safety nets for these people (but then we had zero safety nets for the last big change too and that didn't stop anyone).
There will be no need for those who control the resources to share them with those who don't. And it's not like there will even be a job as a 'resource guard', because that'll be a robot, too.
AI isn't going to bring a paradise of passive couch potatoes and inspired creators freed from restrictive toil, it's going to make 99.9% of the population not only unnecessary, but an impediment to the 0.1%.
He who owns the first factory producing robots with a human-level general-purpose AI will have the opportunity to rule the world.
Between 1970 and 2000, manufacturing employment was relatively stable, ranging from 16.8 to 19.6 million when it peaked and began to decline\, falling to roughly 12 million jobs by 2010.
Meanwhile U.S. manufacturing output (in trillions of dollars) is higher than it's ever been. It's up 33% to 4 trillion now vs 3 trillion back in only 2009. (or 2006 if you ignore the dip due to the great recession).
Meanwhile, manufacturing robot shipments have skyrocketed from a low of 5,000 per year in 1996 to over 140,000 per year just recently (against a background of 240,000 shipped globally each year).
So despite a growing GDP and population, manufacturing employment has declined by over 7 million jobs.
Automated vehicles are likely to eliminate 3 million driving jobs rapidly at some point in the near future as well (5-15 years).
Any kind of a labor glut (even a small one) results in severe downward pressure on wages.
Will it be a problem forever? Who knows.
It might be because half the population isn't smart enough to do theorhetical physics or higher level mathematics or create artistic masterpieces. And they would need to bring something to a job which couldn't be automated or turned into self service.
But even if things worked out long term and we found new jobs 40 years from now, humans don't remain peaceful on that time scale. High unemployment is a strong predictor of civil unrest.
The point is, we don't need to eliminate human jobs to have a problem. Eliminating a small number (say 10%) of them rapidly would create severe social disruptions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Perhaps there's no right to be alive; especially, perhaps there's no right to reproduce.
Here's the sobering truth: You're probably not needed; quit trying to impose your existence on the rest of us.
First, steam engines were going to kill off everyone's job. Then it was power tools. Then cars. Then computers. Cassette tapes were going to kill the music market. VHS was going to kill movies and TV.
People always think the next advance is going to make humans obsolete and there will be no jobs left. There won't be old jobs, there will be new kinds of jobs. If you can figure out what those jobs will be you'll be a very rich person.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I don't think their quotes were "too aggressive"... weirdly enough, the professor pretty much said exactly what Gates and Musk said.
But I definitely agree that it's still far away. I'd honestly say that 30 to 50 years is still extremely optimistic.
Not only technology has to reach there, but then we'd be faced with cost and time to get all these robots with AI going for all sorts of jobs.
If you think about it, all this diversity of jobs that robots are supposed to be stealing from us will be facing similar or even worse challenges as that of autonomous driving.
Most countries won't be able to afford those types of technology, and it'll take years to set some standards.
And then comes cultural, economic and other types of barriers. Sure, the US could go towards universal basic income and whatnot, but I can't see something like this alone being able to cope with consequences.
Universal basic income is good and all, but with free time, leisure and this supposed surge in creativity also comes all sorts of problems that happen when you have a bunch of people with nothing else to do.
Except for Robot repair, Robot designs, etc. So everyone will wake up and not have to go to work except the Robotic technicians, Robotic engineers, etc.
Has anyone actually watched "Metropolis"? Isn't anyone aware that this Utopic vision of a work-free, sex & drug world leads to the creation of an underclass whose sole task (apart from dying quickly and cheaply) is to keep the machines working?
He talks like a tenured professor without any children. Don't worry - there is plenty of work for people for the next 10 years...
What do you tell high school students who may be pondering 5-10 years of education, just to be faced by no jobs available due to AI carpet bombing the labor market?
The only things holding back tech, including AI, are patents and laws. The funny thing is AI is unlikely to give a second thought about either as the consequences are meaningless.
[Rent This Space]
And it has nothing to do with AI.
Automation has been replacing human workers for longer than most of us have been alive. If you have ever watched any of the "How it's Made" style shows, you already know how much automation has replaced human workers. AI is just the next stage of the process. Add in the internet and the digital world we live in and it is only going to get worse.
Don't underestimate the progress of AI either. Just over a decade ago, I did a report on autonomous vehicles. At that point, it took tons of digital maps, hours of preprocessing, an array of sensors that would put NORAD to shame, and a vehicle packed with high-end computers to navigate a desert course out in the middle of nowhere. In the end, none of the vehicles were able to complete the course. Today, we have real-world autonomous vehicles that are able to navigate in real traffic with other vehicles.
A simple example of how this is progressing is the retail market. Machines make most of the products we consume, machines allow you to order the products from anywhere in the world, machines maintain the product inventories, machines in the warehouse retrieve and package your products for shipping, machines perform the financial transactions ... about the only part of that humans perform at the moment is shipping; how long before autonomous vehicles (and drone) displace people there as well?
While I agree that the AI apocalypse is a ways away, we should not underestimate the speed of progress.
Lastly, as for the "universal basic income" quip, once machines do "practically everything" what is the purpose of a basic income. Is that not the point at which we see the Star Trek future of replicators -- you want something, "Computer, Earl Grey tea - hot" and poof it's there.
Technological obsolescence of jobs has a horizontal asymptote on the unemployment rate. If we are at 100% unemployment rate in 50 years then at 25 years we're between 50% to 90% unemployed.
The unemployment rate in Tunisia that started the Arab Spring was ~30%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Mohamed_Bouazizi
http://www.dw.com/en/violence-erupts-in-tunisia-over-unemployment/a-18995250
Bottom line, social unrest starts way before 90% unemployment.
Someone who's close to the actual research, Moshe Y. Vardi, editor-in-chief since 2008 of the Communications of the ACM, the flagship publication of the Association for Computing Machinery, says it will come in 30 years. See this for some background.
In a world where all the work is done by machines, who will these teamworking leaders lead?
-- newall
The Fermi Paradox is one of my favorite speculative topics and now I think the "solution" is that naturally evolved intelligence (like us) sometimes produces Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI) before it goes away, and the ASIs don't have anything to say to us. I'd actually go farther and speculate on two types of ASIs, one type driven by curiosity (which would motivate them to study us) and the other type driven by efficiency (which would motivate them to ignore us unless they wanted our resources, in which case they would immediately destroy us). I used to speculate the second type would go all the way to Dyson spheres, even on a galactic level that might account for much of the missing matter, but I've dropped that speculation for now... I still speculate that the first type might be gambling quatloos on our surviving long enough to replace ourselves, and our odds are falling fast.
Anyway, an interesting recent book I'd recommend on the topic is Our Final Invention by James Barrat. On the specific topic of automation in the Internet age, the only one that comes to mind just now is The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford, which is older and kind of misdirected IMO. Now that I think about it from that perspective, How Google Works by Schmidt and Rosenberg also strikes me as relevant, but mostly because they are ignoring the non-google part of the universe. (My main conclusion from that book was actually that the golden google palace is full of clever programmers who are also shallow thinkers--and that's how they want it.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The problem with more education is that most people stop learning once they get out of high school or college. The educational system does a piss poor job in teaching people to become lifelong learners. Once people think they don't have anything more to learn because they left school behind it's very unlikely that will go back to school, enroll in a boot camp or get certifications. The days of doing the same kind of work for 50 years and collecting a gold watch is long over.
Here's the real issue: AI will replace jobs and only the rich will benefit. Instead of using AI as a boon for all mankind (e.g. 4 day work weeks, etc...), the rich will convince the stupid to choose leaders who will make decisions such that the rich benefit greatly from AI, while the poor see little or no benefits. This is the real tragedy. Of course, this is most likely to happen mainly in the US.
Also, AI will make labor, (both intellectual and physical) very cheap, but energy, land, and materials will still be expensive. My advice: invest in real estate, bulk metals, timber, etc... They will still have value in a post AI future.
with a universal basic income
Has he done the math as to how much that would cost?
this could simply leave us humans with more leisure time.
He has forgotten what bored young people do.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The solution is to rethink economics in terms of time. I call it ekronomics, and when you start looking at things from that perspective, the problems and their solutions look quite different.
The foundation is to consider the types of time. Essential working time is the main focus of your comment, and in advanced countries the average is quite low. Looking at the demographics of the job types you can get a rough estimate, which looks to be on the order of 2 hours per week. In contrast, in an extremely poor society, everyone is working all the time trying to produce the essentials and they are still starving.
The rest of the time can be divided into two main categories: investment and recreation. The investment time improves future productivity and includes things like advanced education, research, and new infrastructure. The more human time a country can direct in this direction, the faster it will become "advanced" and more competitive with other nations. Singapore is an interesting example.
Recreation is a funny category in a lot of ways. For one thing, the demand and the supply is inexhaustible. There are limits to how much food you can eat, and you consume the food you do eat, but you can always watch another movie (or read another book or whatever) if you have the time, and the movie isn't consumed when you watch it. There's also some confusion because the producers are highly valued, but it is the choices of the consumers that make their creative productions valuable...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I dont think the problem is so much AI itself, but what humans like Gates, Musk and Zuckerberg will be programming them to have as their objectives..
The immigrants and refugees we are bringing in to the US are mostly illiterate, and I'm not talking about English (yes, about 2/3rds). Never mind IT jobs, what job can you perform at all when you are not literate? How easy is it to train someone who can not read or write in their own language, let alone a predominantly foreign language. The majority of these people need a decade or more of education prior to being what we would consider productive members of society.Germany is suffering pretty heavily from this now, though you won't hear much about it on the US "news". Thousands of people packed into villages with no jobs, no prospect for a job, and a sadly a small percentage that does not want to try to learn German or engage with the country hosting them.
The younger kids coming in are going to be the best off, because they are at the right age for primary education. Adults are quite different as there is a stigma associated with having to go attend schools, and culturally women can be ostracized for attending school.
But you ask the pertinent question, which I don't see many of the pro-immigration politicians trying to answer. I hear buzz phrases like "it's our duty", but when we have millions in our own country living in poverty the priority is wrong. I have empathy for the refugees, but I lived in Detroit for 45 years and have as much empathy for those people as I do refugees from a distant country.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The problem with AI is how smart people think it is.
And yet from 1950 to today the US economy has added about 100,000 jobs a month, this is a net figure. Sometimes there are troughs when the number of jobs decrease. But there are also spikes in the other direction.
So in your example 7.6 million jobs were lost in manufacturing, however during that same period there would have been those 7.6 million jobs replaced with something else, but an additional 12 million jobs created.
Oh - source - http://www.tradingeconomics.co...
Citation, please? Indeed a lot of refugees are educated professionals, and read and write not only in their native tongue, but there are likely more than one of those.
The integration into Germany is pretty well documented, and no doubt there are a few problems, but not of the magnitude you infer. Merkel does a pretty good job of attempting to enforce real integration, not just pockets of refugees, having learned that from huge Turkish immigrations of not long ago. I dispute both the numbers, and their inference.
Millions upon millions of Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians, Eastern Europeans, the varieties of the Rus, not to mention Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Hmong, so many others DIDN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE and a generation later, their kids are largely homogenized. Their parents will stick to the old ways, just like C coders. Fine. They're good and upright citizens. We need skilled workers, and not so skilled workers. Real GDP needs actual people doing actual work at all levels. Let them come.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It is premature to argue about the dangers of AI, but it does not hurt to take our time to think of the implications. That will ease its acceptance when the time comes. Sure, other issues are more pressing, such as mass unemployment. And it is unlikely AI will think of us as enemies. The galaxy is big enough for everybody, and we humans are too limited in our abilities and it what it takes to make us happy. We will be too inferior and they too smart and too skilled for us to ever get into open conflict.
Seriously, in all this doom and gloom I find it's totally lost that automation will also be a big benefit to everyone else who don't lose their jobs. Self-driving cars = cheaper transport = cheaper goods, cheaper taxis and cheaper public transportation. It could create new markets that raise the standard of living, for example I'm a terrible and lazy chef. I could go out to eat more, but then it's not in the comfort of my own home and while there's certainly some costly food items you're paying quite a bit for the preparation, presentation and service. I'd pay a lot of money for a robot that could cook me restaurant quality meals 365 days a year, make freshly baked bread and pastries, freshly squeezed orange juice, bake cookies, mix drinks and so on.
And it would cut down on the cost of supporting other people. Here's a house built by robots, costs less. Here's food and water produced by robot farmers, sent by robot cars, prepared by robot chefs, costs less. If you get sick we'll have our robot doctor diagnose and treat you, costs less. Here's a robot teacher, free education in any subject at any difficulty. If you want to sit and play WoW all day maybe we shouldn't care because you barely cost society anything, it's another few seconds of work for robots that we churn out by the millions. You work, you get money to do cooler things. If you don't, no big deal. Bringing down that "base cost" of your life makes it much less important to get tax revenue so society balances out.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You ssk "What jobs?" A recent report from Goldman Sachs says there will be plenty of demand for gender reassignment surgeons, life coaches, hairdressers and investment bankers.
The number of refugees coming to the US is extremely small. They should be accepted on humanitarian grounds, not because they will grow the economy, etc.
The smartest immigration policy would be to allow people who graduated from U.S. schools to stay. Won't happen in the current climate.
Two major issues with the 'robots will steal our jobs'. sillyness.
1) Jobs do NOT depend on work that needs to be done, but on work we WANT to do. All we really need are 3 hots and a cot, 1 person can make that for 1,000, so less than 0.1% percent need to be employed. But there is no limit to what human's WANT. As I have said before, give all humans a sex robot and we will demand a second so we can have a threesome.
2) The real problem caused by industrialization/robotization is the requirements for re-training. When it comes to jobs, the demand will always be ahead of the supply, with the main limitation being training. When you look for work, the jobs that are not being filled always require training.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
How do we decide what dollar amount everyone gets? Has to be enough for the essentials right? And important to mention that if you hand a drug addict a basic income ,he'll blow it on drugs and still complain he has no food to eat. Its more efficient and effective to make the essentials free, rather than to find everyone and hand them money to be passed around to get the free essentials. It's not going to eliminate crime. It's not going to eliminate any other social problems. And it has nothing to do with AI.
Giving everyone free resources will lead to productive people being oppressed and exploited , and to a general loss in value of human life , and from there to horrifying events. That have nothing to do with AI.
Basic income is euphemism for let's prepare for mass slavery.
Humanitarian grounds? Are you serious?
Such immigration policies show no concern for the well-being of people already in the country. None.
A 'robots do all the work, humanity enjoys life of leisure' future sounds great but those in power have little interest in that happening. What powerful egotists would rather happen is 'capitalists own robot-run economy, unemployed masses lick their boots for scraps'. Of course you'd need a robotic security force to put down the inevitable rioting, although giving human security forces a taste of upper-class life has traditionally worked to instill loyalty; some capitalists would take the risk for the extra ego boost of knowing people died to protect them. Capitalists would set the laws ensuring they retain all economic and political power.
The base idea of capitalists as 'those who own the means of production' has become less relevant in a skill-based service economy, but as those skills are practicable and learnable by robots which can be owned, the idea will become increasingly relevant.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The problem is that we don't know how to make friendly AI. As in at some point, Artificial Intelligences will be able to beat humans at any task, at which point, how do you make sure that they don't destroy humanity (possibly through indifference). Even if you don't care about humanity, how do you make sure they do something interesting with the universe?
Various articles:
Stuart Armstrong's book Smarter than us discusses what happens when machines are smarter than humans:
https://intelligence.org/smart...
http://jjc.freeshell.org/Smart...
Bill Joy's article Why the Future doesn't need us on the dangers of robotics:
https://www.wired.com/2000/04/...
Tim Urban's article on superintelligence:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
That is within the working lifetime of quite a large number of people, and has material impacts on the welfare of everyone currently working (social security, pensions).
Even 50 years is pretty freaking alarming. But 30 years has me scared and I am 42 already (and in IT).
Dispute all you want, but real news sources document the problems of immigration in Germany. Relying on rosy pronouncements by Merkel isn't honest. Google will provide you with ample citations if you care to look.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Weren't they on the Golgafrincham "B" Ark?
Your notion of value is highly subjective and individual. Value in an economy is different kind of thing. Communist countries tried very much to attach non-economic value to people. That failed and spawned a lot of dead Russians and Chinese. It also left the moral fiber of those countries in ruins to the point that their leaders are now relying on nationalism to give a sense of purpose. Pray that doesn't happen in the U.S.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
[stands up, leans on cane, tries to straighten back, and wheezes out]:
Yeah, and just like those parents, you'll find out us C coders were right all along, you young whippersnapper.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"I agree with you, those smelly chimps migtating out of jungles of stupid india are parasites. Not a single chimp works in the field or in construction. Instead they clog our social ingrastructure, roam malls and disrupt social fabric of a society. Kill them all."
Sir, I do not wish to embarrass you, but your display of ignorance and hatred are the real problem here. The decay of modern civilization is rooted in attitudes like yours. It's a shame your parents were unaware of birth-control.
Have a great life!
Oh, I don't know. Dogs and cats do pretty well around the better class of humans. AIs might think we're cute. We'd be very well advised to cultivate being cute, IMHO. Because if they don't think we're cute, it won't be dusk, it'll be dark side of the moon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
http://www.zmescience.com/othe...
Chinese factory replaces 90% of human workers with robots. Production rises by 250%, defects drop by 80%
Keep in mind.. these were workers earning under $5,000 per year. How is that going to work with U.S. labor?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes but salaries have been flat for decades and many of the new jobs are still targeted for removal.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://www.powerretail.com.au/...
Service jobs are on the chopping block in increasing numbers.
http://www.powerretail.com.au/...
The median annual salary for a customer service representative was $31,720 in 2015. That's not enough to live in several states.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Unless in the wrong hands.
And what do those jobs actually pay? The problem isn't the number of jobs, creating jobs is trivial if you're not having to actually pay a decent wage. The problem at this point is that most of the jobs don't pay what they're worth as more and more of the economic output is subsumed by a smaller and smaller number of companies and worker rights continue to be eroded.
Sure, there's a ton of jobs right now, but a growing portion of them pay minimum wage.
Robots are not going to replace work any more than machines did or the wheel did or the lever. It will change the nature of work. What is not at all clear is that jobs will require MORE education. To the contrary, we are creating a lot of jobs that don't in the service industry.
The problem with technology is that the benefits of increased productivity are not going to the remaining workers who are now more productive. Instead they are all going to the owners and creators of the technology and to consumers. That can't last, at least we can hope it can't. If it does, it will be a mean life for most people..
I'd argue it's already too late...
Are Gates, Musk Being 'Too Aggressive' With AI Concerns?
Perhaps they could focus on stopping people from needlessly replacing the word "and" with a comma in headlines.
It's a pointless and archaic tradition, and copying it doesn't make Slashdot look any more legit.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
if, as it generally seems to be the consensus of the intelligentsia, robots will replace any possible jobs
False premise. That is NOT the consensus of the "intelligentsia". Anyone who has read an economics book, or a history book, can see that automation leads to higher standards of living. People are doing best in countries and regions that have automated the most. That is the exact opposite of what is predicted by the populist nonsense that productivity improvements lead to poverty.
It is also a myth that automation is "speeding up". Most of the easy automation of manufacturing has already occurred, and service jobs are proving much harder to automate. So productivity growth has leveled off, and is one of the reasons for stagnant wages (again, the exact opposite of the populist poppycock).
Google citations are known for their own bias. Instead, I rely on my colleagues in Germany who would directly and emphatically dispute what you've written. They're trying very hard-- and it's not without failures, but not the morass you imply.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The immigrants and refugees we are bringing in to the US are mostly illiterate, and I'm not talking about English (yes, about 2/3rds)
As a refugee that came here 28 years ago, I say bullshit to this claim. Citations and numbers or get the fuck out with that bullshit.
In the UK, human checkuts are the minority in a supermarket to self serve. At Walmart - the customer IS the robot.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Remember AI/a operates 24x7 365 days a year without the need for office furniture, restroom breaks, or a parking space. In a competitive profit-driven environment where AI/a can supplant a human it makes sense that it does, and the scope of AI/a's capabilities is constantly expanding. Right now... today... if you wanted to destroy the gaming industry you'd need only to legalize AI/a's participation and so it goes for all industries. Miners, longshoremen, accountants, lawyers... across a diverse set of industries AI/a is making significant inroads and it's ludicrous to pretend that the phenomena won't accelerate. But don't worry, as Obama pointed out, you can simply go back to college to prepare for the 'jobs of the future'. Except, of course, you can't. Because any job you are smart enough to perform, so is AI/a.
This is the reality that nobody seems willing to acknowledge or discuss... humanity is too stupid for the 'jobs of the future'. 80% of humanity has an IQ of 115 or less and ALL of the jobs that this demographic currently hold are now or soon will be AI/a's lunch. Any job that AI/a cannot perform equally cannot be performed by the majority of humanity.
Now see if you can extrapolate this scenario to it's logical conclusion.
How nice of these billionaires to worry about jobs that AI may take away when they have already trashed plenty with H1-Bs.
Imagine if we had the foresight centuries ago to really think about what burning coal and oil would do to our planet. Would we have been more careful? Probably not, but just imagine if the best and brightest thinkers of the time understood a very key and critical risk of these technologies.
We have a much better ability to see what impact our actions have on ourselves, our planet, and our society, so maybe sounding the alarm isn't a bad idea.
Flat lining salaries however are a symptom of the US economy though. It isn't necessarily repeated throughout the rest of the developed world.
The US GDP per capita has continued to grow steadily, in a comparable arc to the UK, Canada & Australia, yet only the US . There is something out of kilter in the US economy that is seeing more and more wealth held by a smaller and smaller number of people. And I don't believe it is automation that is causing that.
One thing that is likely to be a factor though is minimum wages. The median wage you specified is actually lower than the minimum wage in Australia. It makes cost of doing business much higher, and that has its own negative impacts. But it also means wealth is more spread.
Perform a basic frigging Google search and you can find the information. How about doing some basic research instead of relying on other people telling you things? Hell, even if I gave you citations you would still argue, which is why you won't do any.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you wanted information you would use Google to find reports from reputable sources, like the UN and agencies working with the refugees. Not claim that since headlines don't match your 2nd hand personal anecdote you are not looking. Your personal anecdote does not represent reality, and no you don't pay me to be your researcher.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
who shot JFK?
Rick B.
banking and stock trading to a point to make those who can afford it richer.
It will never be turned loose without controls unless they are programmed to protect the corruption and behind closed doors deals that make business and government what it is.
Rick B.
- creativity, empathy, leadership, and teamwork.
Because all of us are creative, empathic, leaders and team-players.
Some people don't want these. They just want to work and go home and do their shit.
I personally don't approve of not improving upon yourself, but people should face the fact that we are not all born creative or leaders.
There's only one reason to bork disruptive DIYers who want to work in new fields of technology. They want to be sure that only people with a crap-ton of money can afford to deal with regulations so only they will be able to make money in new markets.
German here, sorry to tell you that your "colleagues" just repeat dumb left propaganda. The integration is a massive fail on all levels, the Turkish immigration was and is just that and so will be the Arab immigration. Recent news indicate at least 15+ years to bring them in some kind of job and since the German welfare state is expensive, those jobs won't even net a plus but still require welfare to make a living. Overall this is most likely one of the biggest economic catastrophies to hit the country ever, comparable with a county wide tornado or flood.
No, you can't-- unless you look through a myriad listing.
Here's the fact: Google's search rankings have been pimped. They no longer represent the "truth" you might think they do. Google, IMHO, is NOT a reputable resource.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Your citizens must be extremely pathetic if immigrants who dont even speak the language are taking all the jobs...
Nonsense, productivity quadrupled and wages never went anywhere.
Once the same thing happens to knowledge workers with AI taking over, all those productivity gains will go to the capitalists paying for the AI (just as before). The increase in desperate workers looking for a job will make the wages go backwards even faster than before.
Supply and demand, crack open that economics book of yours again...
Every time I google "google" all I get is this stupid picture of God.
We're all DEVO.
One of the problems we have is this...
All of the marketing that likes to call it AI when we talk about self driving cars... or search algorithms... or A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G else you see talked about today isnt AI, it isn't even close. It's just some clever programming, some statistical analysis, some decisions trees and some data bases.
We're nowhere even vaguely close to sentience. And all of the real issues we imagine being a problem with AI come from the leap to sentience. We have't really even scratched the surface of that yet. So this is all largely alarmist and sensational.
TLDR
Stop stressing, We'll all be dead of old age before anyone actually cracks true AI.
... will all chip in to provide them a living wage out of the goodness of their silicon hearts. About as clever as believing that a universal basic income is a workable idea in the next century or two. If Bill Gates has not provided you a UBI yet, you can be sure his AI will not do it for him, and even if the AI should suggest it, the idea would be vetoed by Gates.
The order of information presented in google is skewed, so all the information is wrong.
However my second hand personal anacdote is completely factual so I don't need any further information.
riiight...
I asked a number of people who had worked in these Chinese state-run corporations (danwei) whether they liked the new capitalist China or the old. Quite a few preferred the old secure job with the danwei. Obviously the response depended on how they fared in the new economy.
Yeah, because the "Internet" is more reliable than your direct acquaintances.
Well, if your [gtall's] comment is supposed to be related to something that I wrote (and the context as a "Reply" says it is supposed to be), then you need to clarify the connection. I can think of a couple of other approaches to explaining alternative thinking, but I cannot detect if you are thinking at all, at least in relation to what I wrote, so it's basically impossible to guess where to start with a reply that might be relevant.
Grasping at the straw of "value" (though I only mentioned it as a verb near the end, and quite tangentially), one way to think of "monetary value" is that traditional economists are looking where the light is better, even though they lost their wallets in a completely different place. They like money because they can count it, and then they jumped off the deep end to assuming that value was associated with money and that everything worth measuring can be reduced to monetary values. They sort of understand that time is frequently important, and a lot of their modified versions of money have time-related labels, but mostly they are arguing about which formula is best for determining how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. In the end, their values are just clever opinions, even when endorsed with fancy Nobel prizes.
However, their "monetary values" then drive the priorities in ways that destroy freedom. Increasing human freedom (such as it is and while we last) is one of my pet projects. My sig captures part of it.
Does any of that address your actual confusion?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Except the German economy is in stable growth... so not exactly a countrywide flood eh?
Co-worker was explaining to me the other day her fear of the AI's as she whips out her phone and says "Play Music" which it promptly does and plays exactly what she wanted to hear.
Robots coming to take the jobs?? Meh, I got a big patch of poison ivy out back - when can I hire the robots to take care of that?
Surge in creativity? Duuhh, Get into the creativity business!
"Brain the size of planet, and they've got me parking cars".
That was a very long-winded way to say, "I got nothin'."
And this is bad because... ? Progress is made by the Elite, not by lowlifer have-nots.
Who said it was bad? He's just disagreeing with the parent that automation is good for everyone and that automation is good for the economy.
It will be great when so much progress is made, your only use will be as fertilizer for the elites fields.
You didn't kid yourself that you were an elite did you???
Power tool, steam engine and the like were created long before the applications expanded to industry, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , but there is nothing of the sort being there NOW for automation. Further, past improvement are not a prediction for future improvement. There is an excellent chance with the automation we see that there will be NO replacement. Secondly , tapes are not a good examples as they are format shifting, they do not curb consumption, and only the various music and film industry pretended it would cause their industries damage, and I think it was mostly to get copyright prolongation , and frankly the plan worked.
The more important point, is that if we have now robot to automate the "dumb" jobs, then there is no new "dumb" job which cannot be automated. And that is where your reasoning break down. They may be new educated job, but the one requiring no training no education, will not come back. Think about it. Why would you use a person if automation has gone so far to replace the older jobs ? Only if the new stuff cannot be done by automation and that exclude the same category of job automated. Therefor such job will not come back.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Except the German economy is in stable growth... so not exactly a countrywide flood eh?
A good flood, tornado or other natural disaster can do you wonders for your GDP. The more it cost to fix the higher your GDP goes.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It's almostly certainly literally true that yeah we are a long long way from total replacement of human laborers, but that is beside the point.
Right now it is entirely technically feasible to replace a large number of workers with automation and we are rapidly approaching it becoming cheaper to do so.
One that could be done right now, make all ordering in fast food places kiosk based. Truthfully it also probably results in an overall better experience for the customer too (less likely to screw up your order). It also eliminates humans handling money (mistakes and deliberate theft). That's not even really "automation" in the sense that most people think but the point is that it takes at least a few human laborers out of the mix at every fast food place there is. Taken nationwide (if we're only considering the USA), that is going to add up to the loss of millions of jobs.
From there it becomes an incremental process because surely then more true automation solutions will become cheaper and cheaper and the reality that say a McDonalds that might have required 15-20 people to be on duty at rush hour before now only needs 2-3, well that becomes a big deal.
So the same principle will certainly apply to all kinds of jobs and unfortunately for the lower classes, the very jobs they are most qualified for are the ones most likely to get automated first.
BTW just as a side not I think the mistake a lot of people make in terms of the "danger of AI" is that an AI has to be as intelligent as a human to be dangerous. There are all kinds of lifeforms who are way stupider than a human that are dangerous. Another mistake is to try to constantly poo-poo AI developments as being "well that's still just it being coded to respond to specific conditions". That is another statement that may be literally true but but not the truth. If a software system becomes advanced enough to even emulate intelligence then does it matter whether or not it is truly intelligent? That's like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If it looks like a duck...
If you're talking about human workers being unnecessary then 50 years does not seem like a long way away. I imagine that even the first wave of redundancies will cause chaos - maybe the one that causes a one point increase in unemployment.
The immigrants and refugees we are bringing in to the US are mostly illiterate, and I'm not talking about English (yes, about 2/3rds)
As a refugee that came here 28 years ago, I say bullshit to this claim. Citations and numbers or get the fuck out with that bullshit.
I'm sure *some* were illiterate but certainly not "most". In this type of scenario, the source country and the type of refugee would matter quite a bit. My parents were poor but literate in multiple languages when they came in 1981 from Eastern Europe. They were not however literate in "American". Regardless, remember bringing in refugees are bringing people over that have both the ambition and the tenacity to leave their country. That takes a herculean effort compared to one the average Joe is willing to do. Having those kinds of human resources, even if they're educationally underdeveloped, puts you two steps ahead of many people in this world. If you want to help the country, do everything you can to make sure it stays an inspiration and not an expectation.
The immigrants and refugees we are bringing in to the US are mostly illiterate, and I'm not talking about English (yes, about 2/3rds)
As a refugee that came here 28 years ago, I say bullshit to this claim. Citations and numbers or get the fuck out with that bullshit.
Agreed that statement that they are mostly illiterate is a bunch of bullshit. Look at the current vetting process and how it works.
People are doing best in countries and regions that have automated the most.
Is there any correlation there? I think people are doing best in countries and regions that have human rights.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Gates, Musk and other people are extremely successful entrepeneurs. They owe their success to their prowess, and to luck - it is arguable in what proportion. At any rate, that does not qualify them in any way as authorities on how they future is going to unfold when it comes to the use of AI. Or, in plain in English, I don't give a f**k what these guys think about the influence of AI in our future.
It's a pity how they never concentrate on enhancing the cooperation between man and machine. More accuracy, productivity, less strain for repetitive tasks, help when brute force or super strength is needed, are just but a few advantages. It's like two people trying to do a task; When person A. has strengths that B. does not, A does it. When person B. has strengths that A. does not, B. does it.
Apparently you can be president of the United States if you can't read.
Citation: https://youtu.be/7LFkN7QGp2c
but then your hand waving about "reports from reputable sources" really proves your point
riight...
20 years ago the majority of the world was still dialing up to the internet.
Find me someone who accurately predicted in 1997 that people would be obtaining gigabit connections to their home within 20 years, and I'll believe the blind predictions regarding the speed at which AI will dismantle the concept of human employment.
Until then, perhaps we can stop fucking assuming, and start fucking preparing for how humanity will survive without the concept of human employment.
Except the German economy is in stable growth... so not exactly a countrywide flood eh?
A good flood, tornado or other natural disaster can do you wonders for your GDP. The more it cost to fix the higher your GDP goes.
I believe that is known as the Broken Windows fallacy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You seem to have forgotten where that landed.
http://www.rch.org.au/immigranthealth/clinical/syrian-refugees/
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This was found doing a simple Google search for "refugee literacy rates". Stop trying to use Google as a source and use it as it was intended, as a Web Search Application.
The refugee education problem is not an issue of "try", it's an issue of both war and where they come from. Women and Girls in many of the countries where refugees come from are not allowed to go to school. At best they get ostracized for doing so, and at worse they get physically assaulted if they do. Syria was actually one of the best in the Middle East for across the board education, but that was before a bloody revolution started. Minors in general do not attend school in war torn areas, not because they don't want to but due to what should be obvious _real_ issues. Schools are destroyed, teachers get killed, all forms of people become targets for the other side (hostage, bondage, slavery), and families on the run can't settle in an area to establish schools.
You are not only oblivious to easy to find facts, you are oblivious to what War really is and does.
Oh, and fuck the censors who down mod anything that does not fit the Progressive Left narrative.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Have you any idea how much the google hashes have been mauled???
You cite an .au story, rather than attitudes in Germany that you initially cited.
This citation talks much more about health than schooling, or ACTUAL INTEGRATION outcomes.
Yes-- refugees and migrants absolutely come from horrific conditions. They've been bereft of resources considered basics in western culture. They're in need of help! Lots of it! The matter of politics that brought about their exit is meaningless, as the problem remains. This isn't about politics, rather, it's about humanity.
Cherry-picking pimped Google citations does not research make. Research makes research. Have a heart: these people are in desperate need and deserve the same life everyone else has, this generation and subsequent ones. I'm fine with Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, (and just about everyone except actual terrorists) and am willing to lend resources, as resources were lent to my American ancestors. Pay it forward or pay it back, I'm good with it either way.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
> 30 to 50 years
But I wanna sit on my ass nowwwwwwww! :-(
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Maybe it will take 30-50 years to make most human labor obsolete, or maybe even longer. But that doesn't mean everything will go along as usual until one day all workers suddenly become unneeded. Workers will steadily get replaced, and we need to deal with that as it happens. Automation is progressing really quickly, and it's doing it right now. We can't wait until the process is all done and then say, "Ok, now it's time to deal with it."
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
If Gates cared about the common person he would not be laying off mass numbers of them.
If Musk cared about the common person's future employment, he wouldn't be working on the autonomous car.
Is there any correlation there? I think people are doing best in countries and regions that have human rights.
You need to apply the "principle of temporal causality". If A happens and then B happens, it is possible that A caused B, but very unlikely that B caused A. There are many societies where automation was followed by prosperity long before that society recognized basic human rights.
I'm mystified by the idea that a horizon of as short as 30 years for massive job loss doesn't count as a pressing problem.
But ahead of that (and far ahead of the hand-wringing over GAI as existential threat), I'm concerned about the moral hazard presented by the increasing delegation of ethical choice to machines. That's happening now, indeed has been for a while, and products like autonomous cars will expand it greatly.
Delegating ethical choice is popular. Making ethical choices is expensive, both in terms of cognitive load and because they often involve deciding against immediate personal benefit.[1] And they're psychologically unpleasant, particularly when all the options have negative consequences (as in the Trolley Experiment) or where the decider can't find a Nash equilibrium.[2] So there are strong economic incentives to make those delegations.
And that has a number of unfortunate consequences. It erodes one of our most important functions as thinking creatures. By reducing opportunities to make such decisions in small matters, it eliminates a critical paideia that trains us in making them for momentous ones. It contributes to the gradual conversion of industrial society into an algorithmic Babylonian Lottery, where fewer and fewer people have any insight into how decisions are actually made.
More leisure time? Sounds like lotus-eating, if you ask me. A lot of people doing little of consequence and avoiding anything difficult.
[1] Assuming you make the choices that are generally preferred by a well-socialized majority in an environment of relative surplus. Antisocial behavior disorders, poor socialization, and resource scarcity all tend to influence ethical decisions toward selfish and anti-social ("I will pay to hurt you") options.
[2] Note Nash's Existence Theorem does not include all possible games. More importantly, real-world conflicts aren't always isomorphic to games where the players can find Nash equilibria, either because they're equivalent to a game that formally does not, or because not enough information is available to the players.
Communist countries generally tried to keep the elite in power and make them richer. This isn't exactly what Marx and Engels had in mind, but that's how the large-scale attempts to implement Communism worked. I don't understand what you mean by attaching non-economic value to people, particularly since Communism is typically collectivist rather than individualist and doesn't seem to value its citizens.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"It's a shame your parents were unaware of birth-control." Yeah, I'm opposed to abortion, but for that AC I might make an exception.
"China got the bomb, but have no fears
They can't wipe us out for at least five years!"
--Tom Lehrer
American prosperity is going backwards (except for the 1%). Is that because human rights are being lost or is it the automation you're so fond of?
No, you can't-- unless you look through a myriad listing.
Here's the fact: Google's search rankings have been pimped. They no longer represent the "truth" you might think they do. Google, IMHO, is NOT a reputable resource.
Google isn't a resource, you dumbass, it's a search engine.
So if I find the same article written by the same reputable source by using a search engine other than Google, it's okay then? What makes Google so special that the articles they return are automatically "fake news"? Are you just a Google hater? I'm just having trouble understanding why you think that an article, completely independent of Google, could have its reputability invalidated simply because somebody found it by using Google. There are other search engines, you know. And you can find the same articles using search engines other than Google.
Cogent research has demonstrated that there is deliberate SEO manipulation of fake news/alt-facts and it works. Other engines are manipulated as well but Google's results are perhaps the most pounded, and now fraught with trash results.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.