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'We Need Robots To Take Our Jobs,' Veteran Tech Reporter John Markoff Explains Why (recode.net)
Former New York Times technology reporter John Markoff used to think robots taking jobs was cause for alarm. Then, he found out that the working-age population in China, Japan, Korea and the U.S. was declining. From a report on Recode: "We need the robots for two reasons: On the one side, there are not enough workers," Markoff said on the latest episode of Recode Decode. "The demographic trends are more important than the technological trends, and they happen more quickly. On the other side, there's this thing called the dependency ratio, the ratio between caregivers and people who need care," he added. "For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally."
In the long-term view of things, that's what I worry the most about, on behalf of humanity in general. In some places in the world (not going to name any names) human life is already seems to be considered virtually worthless. I see a possible future where an aging population is just 'thrown away' like so much garbage, nobody caring whether or not they starve to death or die of disease, because while young, able-bodied people will be a dime-a-dozen because of automation, elderly people, who are not capable of doing much work, will be considered to be a liability to be liquidated. Do you really think anyone wants to live in a world like that? Sadly in some ways we're already there, the elderly are not honored or taken care of, they're dumped into 'homes' that treat them worse than animals, keeping them alive, but quiet, so they continue to get paid for their 'services' to them. Really, seriously, honestly, some of you seem to think that there's going to be some sort of utopia created by all this automation and robotics and fake 'AI', but the reality is already all around us, and it's just going to get worse when people are made more and more obsolete by a corporate world that has no reason to care about people, only profits, and many governments that are not much better, more interested in their GDP than the welfare of old people. When the entire world is run by money, who is going to advocate for these people? Don't act like you don't care, either, because no one is exempt from aging, and saying you'll just kill yourself when you get too old is a lie.
John Markoff - is that the same asshole who made a career writing inaccurate shit about Kevin Mitnick and repeating the same erroneous stories? Even though he knew they were wrong? The same asshole who presented himself to law enforcement as an expert on Mitnick even though he never met him? The same asshole who spent half his time ridiculing Mitnick's body? Is it that asshole?
Basic Income was conceived of in response to the idea that human labor might become obsolete in a wide sense. If all of the manual labor is being done by robots then what are the masses going to live on? Likewise, if we are able to meet all or most of our manual labor needs through automation why waste human potential on manual labor?
You're conceptualizing basic income in a world exactly like ours. If you conceptualize it in the context of a post manual labor world, which we do seem to be heading towards, then it comes out as the only logical alternative to butchering the excess population.
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H1-B is a great example of this problem. The problem is companies abusing H1-B visas, and the simple solution is to get rid of (or severely limit) H1-B visas. Thing is, you need some level of skilled immigration for any modern economy, and the idea that if companies can't abuse H1-B they will just pay an American a good wage instead of laughable. They will either offshore or they will move to some state with weak employment laws and abuse Americans with low wages and awful conditions.
The more complex solution is to fix the H1-B system to prevent the worse abuse, and then concentrate on making US workers more attractive. Set up new tech hubs and encourage companies to move there, so that their employees can enjoy a reasonable cost of living and thus don't need super high salaries just to pay the rent. Require companies who are having to get H1-Bs in because of lack of local skills to invest in training locals to give them those skills, and encourage them (e.g. with tax breaks) to invest more in apprenticeships.
So on the one hand you have "ban the thing that is a problem, instant solution, problem solved" but doesn't really work, verses "do multiple things over several years and be interventionist, and eventually things will get better". The latter is a much harder sell, especially when the other side is whipping up anger and resentment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC