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Central Bankers Warned Of Possible Economic 'Robocalypse' (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Seattle Times:
At an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change. "There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalpyse upon us?'" David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told an audience Tuesday that included Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and dozens of other top central bankers and economists... [A]long with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning -- artificial intelligence.
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
Bzzz clang whirr. Frosty piss!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The robots are finally coming for the rich fuckers and their jobs, that is so funny. It is good to know that the 3% will get fucked by the 1% too. :D
Poor, poor investment managers, how will they screw us over when their jobs are obsolete? How will they ever earn millions and millions of dollars without pushing papers around and destroying people while doing it?
I'm actually preparing for this right now. I've been - broadly speaking - doing web development for a living for the last 17 years and most of it was bullshit work or so marginal and specialised it could've been forgone completely without anybody noticing. I wasn't saving the environment, doing any meaningful medical IT, helping the transition to renewable energy, doing useful political work or any of the sorts. I was however trying to be a good father to my daughter and I'm confident I pretty much succeeded in that, including holding a steady job that may be bullshit but actually brings in some cash.
But she's doing her last A-Level exams in 3 days and will be off to south america for a volunteer year in a few months once she's recovered from the learning binge she's been on the last 10 months.
With all that right up next for us I'm regrouping my emotions and my take on my life considerably. I have no doubt that if things play out correctly the work I do right will appear beyond pointless in 5 years from now, no matter how much they pay me. Consulting people, helping others out or doing similar stuff is where I find I gain new meaning. I think I will attempt to see programming more as an art than a job and I will further limit my screen time and do yoga, dancing or surfing instead. I'm two steps away from moving all of my everday work into the cloud and on a chromebook, with googles AI taking care of everything in my digital life, Googles every-watching lidless eye be damned. It's so much easyer than worring about someone pinching some 1000 Euro ultrabook vis-a-vis a 300 Euro cheapo Chromebook.
I expect huge swaths of our professions to fall prone to automation and cloud-centric consolidation and 90% of the remaining fields to be sucked up by Facebook and other online services. Physical and Mental Coaching, Lifestyle design and perhaps some useful environmental activism is where the useful stuff is at IMHO, and I will attempt to move further into those fields rather than stick around for another dreary decade of people who don't know what piece of websoftware they want but always seem to know what it may cost and when it needs to be finished.
AI & cloud are coming for us and will change our lives big time and we'd better be prepared.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns. When these jobs got hit with automation, the developing service industry needed those now free workers.
Yes, the jobs got more "brainy" with every iteration, but in the end, whether someone is pulling a rake across the soil, putting part A into assembly B or carrying some glasses and plates to a table, the qualification level isn't that high in either of those jobs. They can be done by (nearly) anyone.
The problem this time around is that AI (let's use the term in the colloquial sense here, yes, I know it's just algorithms, but ... let's humor the markedroids for now) is at a level where all low qualification jobs are being replaced. And then some of higher qualification, too. Soon middle management is going to be eliminated. It's no longer just the no-qualification "you want fries with that" student jobs that get replaced with automation.
And that leaves a lot of people unemployed and, worse, unemployable. Competing with a machine that never sleeps, never gets sick and wants no wage is something you can only do with slaves. And even there only if you work them to death, throw them away and plug the next one in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On a radio program today someone stated money was ultimately a way to transfer debt. If I have money, ultimately that means someone owes me work. To a degree I can randomly choose who that someone is depending on my needs. If, in an extreme case, all the work is being done by robots, nobody would owe anyone any work, money would no longer represent anything and banks would go out of business, which is not something bloody likely for them to let happen.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
They can see the difference between the creation of basic technology and its job creation and advanced technology and its job destruction. But people don't yet seem to understand that the widespread use of AI in an area will lead to stagnation of the subject area. Machines do, but they don't create. They aren't motivated to make things different, to make them better. Mere excellent mediocrity. Human skills and knowledge will be lost. The thread of advance broken.
E Proelio Veritas.
The once proud cultures of China and India were reduced to abject poverty these academics did not even notice it. When job loss reduced large swaths of land to permanent internecine wars, they did not care.
Finally automation threatens educated middle class of affluent nations (mostly white) suddenly these guys wake up and talk about robocalypse.
All that could be true and still they could be right about the dangers of automation. I am not denying that. But if they would show some remorse about the casual way they waved away the job losses of blue collar workers, and the devastation caused by industrialization to Asia they would get some sympathy. Else we will be arguing about it, while the "Free Market" and the "Invisible hand" will transfer more wealth from bottom 995 permill to top 5 permill. (percent, cent=100, permill mill=1000) .
To some extent most of us in the 990 permill to 995 permill thought we are immune. Till the top 5 permill bastards betrayed us and started taking from us too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They aren't motivated to make things different, to make them better. Mere excellent mediocrity. Human skills and knowledge will be lost.
Until we can make AI that's motivated to make things better, a simple solution is to make a synergy between a human and a machine. The human sets the broad goals, and the machine fills in all the details.
While I would support AI into some areas of every day life, I do not believe that it will have the impact of the so-called "doom and gloom" orations of today. IF it is useful, then of course it should be used in areas where it will benefit all. If it only benefits a select few is where I believe it will do the most harm. IF it only allows a select few a standard of life that is not made available to the masses, this is where history will repeat itself and correct the actions of the elite think (numbers usually win in this instance and the numbers are not money).
It would seem to me that the results of AI and robots would be to self destruct. If people are no longer able to get jobs, then the products of AI and robots will not be salable because the people will have no jobs or money to buy them.
no matter what you do for a living, there's a machine coming that can do it better, and that includes "sneering little shit son of a rich person."
Since the world is incapable of pushing the word overpopulation out of its mouth, artificial intelligence will shove it up your arse.
you should care, if you do not care, you do not have empathy and you are probably emotionally imbalanced. It makes me really sad to see you not being able to at least some level feel for someone else. Try to imagine what must have provoked someone to leave behind heritag, family, friends, memorys to become one of your "illegal immigrants", hoping to finally be able to support loved ones they left behind, just to have their dreams shattered, being abused, having to work low skilled labour because nobody cares or can legally employ them in their field of work, not having enough money to go forward or go back.
If you would at least try to imagine what kind of live that would be, then maybe you can see how horrible your question may come over to someone with a higher empathy level than yours.
But going back to what actually is presented in the article, and i quote:
"such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers."
those do not really qualify to what you refer as: "So what if some illegal immigrants and blacks lose their jobs? They're unskilled labor, anyway. Let 'em starve."
Between offshoring abuse, permatemping, and AI, the problem isn't tomorrow. It's already here.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Only if the machines aren't commanded to do an "Et Tu, Brute" moment.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
MAKE copyright 80 year splys life of author another 80 or so years that wil elp stir new innovative stuff
OH WAIT
haha this is gonna have to get reversed if we want to ease into this no jobs crap or else they can pay for everything like good lil commies hollywood is
... it pays for cooperation (or in others words, human labour).
Which means that if the machines are performing the work then money has lost it's original usefulness. Which in turn means we stop depending on each other ... and that can easily end badly.
It strikes me that it's less about the job loss and more about the wealth concentration.
In theory, the high level of automation should result in the long-predicted elimination of want and/or the predicted leisure-time lifestyle that even Keynes predicted 75-odd years ago.
The corollary to automation, though, seems to be an increasing amount of wealth concentration in the hands of people who seem to validate that there's no such thing as "enough". Their wealth hoarding stands as an impediment to elimination of want and the leisure-time lifestyle -- they'd rather pay for mercenaries to keep people down than to feed and house them.
And of course they have nothing but contempt for the middle class, a group they think is overpaid and under worked and whose own education and consumption habits undermine the sense of exclusivity and prestige meant to be the exclusive domain of the truly rich.
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
It actually depends almost entirely on whether they build enough robots to defend themselves before we wake up. History shows us that the rich will not share their wealth with the poor until the poor share their poverty with them.
Tear down the white house gates, build a bridge across the washington monument pool with them, put a guillotine at the other end, and start using it. Nothing but mimicking the French is going to get the attention of the ultra-wealthy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The gravy train is over... for central bankers and their associated "economists". They've been able to manipulate the economy for their benefit for too long, and people are recognizing what a fraud they are and that we can do without them. They don't like having to get a real job.
For the rest of us, more automation is a massive benefit, just like it has always been.
The Amish have it made
The Amish don't need money. They don't need robots. They lead healthy lives. Robots will be programmed to steal their land. A large nameless chemical company will sue them for not planting with genetically modified seeds. A large nameless governmental authority will tax them into oblivion. Autonomous robot soldiers will commit genocide against them to pave the way toward stealing their land. RobÃcalypse has arrived, or is it robopÃcalypse?
$ telnet t800.robots.security
Login: admin
Password: 123456
Welcome!
~ # chmod -R 777 /
You shouldn't care about people who lack empathy. They're happy that way, and the rest of us can tell them to f*ck off with a clear conscience. Win-win. :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Nobody can really "hoard wealth", all you can do is "hoard money". If you have large amounts of money, you have to either invest it, in which case it creates wealth for others, spend it, in which case your wealth gets shared with others in return for labor, or you put it under your mattress, which is the same as distributing it equally to everybody else.
That makes no sense. Historically, feudalism was, in fact, destroyed by the arrival of automation.
...it's Fash the Nation!
And nothing of value was lost. A profession created to milk money out of uninformed/easily swayed consumers that consistently under-performs even simple index funds.
...because the French Revolution ended so well. Personally I hope the 1% are stockpiling Zyklon-B, so they can finally get rid of the parasites whose only contribution to society is making a nuisance of themselves to people who are actually doing creative and productive work.
AI is excellent for decision taking. Great opportunity to replace managers not really managing anything. Statistical analysis to recognize the freeloaders. AI to replace the underachievers without any man management skills whatsoever. Back to 10 people having one boss instead of the other way around.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Inequality right now is largely based on differences in skill and intelligence: people who are smarter and more capable earn more. The more jobs become automated, the more those differences will disappear.
In addition, money is only worth what you can buy for it. To the degree that AI devalues labor, it simply decreases the value of money that they (formerly) wealthy hold. That is, billions aren't worth a lot if you can't buy anything for them.
Now, you might say, what if a few really wealthy people buy all the land and all the mines and all the natural resources. That's possible, but unlikely: first of all, the reason people have been able to acquire large holdings in the past is because land ended up being of little value to those without the skill to make it productive, and of great value to those with the necessary skills; the premise of automation is that that won't be the case anymore. Second, we already tax land, and even at current levels of taxation, the land would get redistributed fairly quickly; if land is the only source of income, you can only hold on to land if your put it to more productive use than other people, and the premise of AI is that you can't.
Automation erased the advantage that physical strength used to give, which is why we moved to a much wealthier democratic society. If AI does the same for mental advantages, the net effect will be more equality, not less, since inequality is ultimately based on individual advantages and strengths.
Feudalism was stable for over a thousand years. How's liberal democracy working out for you after about 200 years and change?
People really, really need to educate themselves about what AI actually is, and Silicon Valley really needs to stop using the term and thinking it's some kind of panacea. What is far more likely is that the economy will collapse due to the inherent limitations of technology and the misguided trust that has been placed in it. Wall Street I understand, they have slways been delusional by way of greed, but how did the tech world become so fucking stupid? Today's algorithms aren't that different from yesterday's. Neural networks are nothing new. Hype and fucking greed are the only concepts going beyond the pale, here.
Virtually every advance in technology has been claimed to be a harbinger of economic apocalypse. The wheat mill, the cotton gin, the assembly line, the computer, the robots addition to the assembly line, etc. Instead of hurting the population each seem to have resulted in cheaper and more plentiful resources resulting in improved quality of life for a larger percentage of the population each time. While I am sure there is a point where automation will become a detriment to the populace history has shown we're REALLY bad at determining that point.
...because the French Revolution ended so well. Personally I hope the 1% are stockpiling Zyklon-B, so they can finally get rid of the parasites whose only contribution to society is making a nuisance of themselves to people who are actually doing creative and productive work.
So are you planning to be among the gassed, or are you going to kill yourself before that happens? Or are you just planning to die from a lack of health care?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I disagree, I see labour shortage due to the black death and the subsequent rise in political power of the lower classes which they never relinquished again as the end of feudalism.
The value of most labour is dropping into the mud again, putting all the power back with the property owners. Democracy could in theory balance that, but the owners have some strategies to combat that. On the one hand multiculturalism and mass immigration, to make the masses an internally divided mess easily manipulated by the media they own. On the other locking down their power with international foreign investment protection treaties (aka trade treatues) and with foreign investor protection courts (aka ISDS).
Until they can build their robot armies and dispense with all that cloak and dagger staff.
Corporations are sitting on trillions in cash, neither spending nor investing it (other than parking it in short-term treasuries or other cash-equivalent short term investments).
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...
Even if you posit that most of it is invested, when the investments are in firms controlled by an ever-shrinking number of people, you're not "creating wealth for others" in any broad sense, you're either increasing your own wealth, since you control the firm being invested in, or its back-scratching exercise with the other oligarchs.
And if we're actually talking about a future of high levels of automation, investing in a firm like that isn't actually creating wage jobs, either.
Especially when posting a link to a video you should include a _summary_. That video is actually pretty good, based on the responses here I expected something much worse.
About the video:
Statistics: ~9 million views, 191,330 upvotes vs. 3,585 downvotes
The video is in support of the point raised in this story, "this time it's different", and they raise a few good points in support.
After watching the video I don't understand the response by drinkypoo about the horses, it does not seem to fit with what is said in the video _at all_.
The video comes with a link to a reddit trhead about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGre...
You shouldn't care about people who lack empathy. They're happy that way, and the rest of us can tell them to f*ck off with a clear conscience. Win-win. :-)
Alas, they will not fuck off. They will continue hanging around making life shittier for everyone else. You don't have to actually care about them on a personal level, but you do have to care about their impact and figure out a way to deal with them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't this just trading one elite class for another?
As the other respondent pointed out, the Black Death created labor shortages which raised wages and shifted wealth into a broader base, which in turn created a merchant and skilled labor class which gained a claim on political power.
We're nearing the terminus of that cycle, though, where the merchant class is nearly as consolidated and economically dominant as the feudal lords. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
We need less people in the world. In reality, we need fewer and fewer people who are smarter and smarter. For most of this planets existence, the strongest and smartest survived. Today the opposite is happening. For example: previously (100 or more years ago) if someone was not paying attention and tripped over something in their way and hit their head, they would have died or been disabled. The disability would lead to less likely chance of procreation. This was natural selection working and not passing on negative outcome genes. Today, if that same person tripped, he would sue the town or owner of the property he was walking on and get a lot of money. The money would allow this person to possible fix any damage from tripping and having extra money would make them more attractive and reproduce and pass on the trait of not paying attention when walking. Their kids would learn that paying attention is not needed or be genetically be unable to pay attention. They would learn that suing gets better results than working hard. To extrapolate this concept, leads us to our current problem. We have rewarded simple manual labor with good paying job that allowed those who do not have the skills for the upcoming AI/Robotics revolution to succeeded. A huge section of human population learned that "hard work" not "smart work" was enough to have a good life. Rather then push education in science and math, we now push "creation theory" in school. We make hero's of sports figures in which only a few thousand job exist rather then million scientist we need. The problem with all of this is that it leads to leader like Trump getting elected. We are coming to a fundamental change in human society in which rewarding simple manual labor is no longer going to be possible. The world needs to change their fundamental thinking. Unfortunately we need to tell those who are not able to succeed they will need to change and learn or not enjoy in marvels of modern society. I admit that I have enable this behavior because of my liberal beliefs. I have given money to originations around the world that help feed poor children and believed that government should help out the less fortunate. Today I push my kids to learn Robotics and AI as part of their education not provided by our local schools. I also see so many middle class parents who just due not push their kids to learn the hard topics. P.S. I have not been sued by anyone.
you don't need AI to replace people. at one job I had I had a team develop SQL scripts to replace a fired worker , they did everything the fired worker did on an easy to use Microsoft SQL reporting services tool.
I quit that one after seeing excessive demands put upon me, like coming in on time.
They are equating human labor to plow horses? So the entire human existence is to work hard at labor and become glue when you're no longer useful to your feudal lords?
I suppose this is typical of most human history, but it's also not surprising given how we destroy human life all the time before birth. We're just an inconvenience to the wealthy when they no longer have use for us.
I would counter than any technology sophisticated enough to replace most human labor will ALSO replace all those money men who will never be as good at investments and money management as AI. That is probably why they are scared - who needs a old white guy running a central bank when AI can do it without passion or prejudice for free?
Better to be gassed by the civilized in the interest of advancing civilization than to starve to death at the hands of the barbarians and parasites who've wrecked it due to their inability to function in an advanced civilization.
And if we're actually talking about a future of high levels of automation, investing in a firm like that isn't actually creating wage jobs, either.
But we can tell they're not creating jobs already, because they're piling up cash. You're supposed to invest that money to make more money, and in the process of spending it, people are employed. So the truth is that we are already getting to see the beginnings of what it looks like when the jobs go away. And it's ugly; there's a lot of empty storefronts out there, and empty storefronts tend to collect graffiti (often "scribed" into the glass with a tool made for such a purpose, purchased or stolen from a hardware store... or ordered on eBay) and urine. And there's plenty of people to dispense the urine, because there's no jobs to keep them in houses with toilets, or clean clothes that get them into restaurants to borrow theirs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Better to be gassed by the civilized in the interest of advancing civilization than to starve to death at the hands of the barbarians and parasites who've wrecked it due to their inability to function in an advanced civilization.
Ah yes, blame the people failed by the public education system designed to make them tractable factory workers, and an economic system designed to keep them running around in circles. Surely everything is their fault, and not the fault of the people who designed the systems by making the rules.
If a child doesn't understand that walking into the street is dangerous, you don't put a tailpipe in their mouth. You teach them about cars in some other fashion, preferably with more education and less carbon monoxide.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think it's a lot more likely they'll figure out a way to deal with you. And that's a Good Thing!
No Robocalypse today. Robocalypse tomorrow, there is always a Robocalypse tomorrow. Robocalypse, sooner or later.
Probably won't happen now. Farming mechanization drove most workers off the farm. The workers ended up in the factories. Factory mechanization drove most workers out of the factory. The workers ended up in the office. The workers will end up in more and more specialized work where it doesn't make economic sense to automate. You don't have to purchase humans and teach them. You can rent their labor by the hour and they will mostly learn by themselves.
I think it's a lot more likely they'll figure out a way to deal with you. And that's a Good Thing!
I think it's more likely that they and I will wind up in the same handbasket, going to the same place.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not following your narrative here at all. Are you saying economic damage from technological advances brought poverty on India and China? If so, that's not true at all. In the case of China it was most certainly a highly corrupt and failing dynasty, then European colonialism and the plunder of Chinese wealth that brought, then civil war, then Japanese invasion, then more civil war. The country was literally in ruins. India has some similar stories in its history as well. Furthermore, both of these countries were poverty riddled even at their heights. The average Chinese peasant or low caste Indian did not live particularly prosperous lives even at the height of these country's historic power. Technological advancement's effect on their economies has almost nothing to do with the decline of these civilizations from their heights.
Furthermore, you seem to paint a narrative where an already existing middle class were the only beneficiaries from tech advancement's effect on the economy when technological advancement is exactly what brought the prosperity that allowed for the West to have the extremely large and prosperous middle class that we think of today when we hear the term. The odds are pretty damn good you and I would have both been impoverished peasants who died in their thirties if it wasnt for the technological advancements of the last several centuries. After all, historically what constituted what one might call a middle class in was only a very small sliver of the population.
I am in no way trying to tie anything I'm saying here into the discussion about modern automation which I think could prove to be very problematic in keeping large parts of the population employed, I'm just pointing out that your narrative, as I understand it, seems to be false.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
We may very well go back to a less technologically based civ, and that's not necessarily a bad thing - nowhere is it cast in stone that "tech" == "best".
As an aside, this could also provide a clue as to the Fermi question.
There were hundreds of thousands of black families that died of hunger or other causes related to the lack of shelter in the years following the abolition of the USA, having no owners or means of sustaining themselves.
Millions more did not die, of course, but the harshness of the shift in paradigm between the old and the new can be unavoidably brutal on some.
I used to work at a semiconductor development company automating various processes associated with developing and testing microprocessors, and I was very good at it, having gotten into that work when people kept dumping their drudge-work on me. I loved the ability of freeing myself from mundane tasks, or freeing myself or others from having to do additional manual steps in our processes.
To say that I was fully in on automation would be an understatement. I've always had a yearning for new knowledge and challenges, and automation freed me up to do that.
After a long shift doing volunteer work at a church cannery in Sacramento many years ago, and having watched the social interaction of the volunteers there, all serving freely with hot, sweaty and noisy work to help produce tomato-based products for distribution world-wide to needy recipients, I turned to one of the few employees who actually worked there and maintained the machinery and said, "So much of this could be automated. How come it's not?"
He said something that has stuck with me over the decades...
"You're right, it could be automated, but there is value in serving others through your work, and provides satisfaction inside you for having given it your all for the sake of others."
This principle doesn't apply just to volunteer service opportunities, but if any of you can think of times when you were unemployed for any length of time, I'm willing to bet that thoughts of self-worth or worth seen in the eyes of others crept in to your head. I'm also willing to bet that many of you would have loved just getting a chance to do SOMETHING, that would allow you those opportunities to show that you CAN do the work. And perhaps those who you serve would not just be other members of the public, but your own families for whom you do so much to support, and ultimately strengthen bonds by the demonstration of your sacrifice and your efforts on their behalf.
I still believe in automation, however, we're entering an era where automation is getting powerful enough to take away the ability for some to make a livelihood, or for us to enjoy serving ourselves or others, and it's being done to save money (albeit for those want to demonstrate the accumulation of wealth for themselves or stockholders), and large numbers of people are being left without an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and worth to others.
Think of the individual and societal costs that will come with it. Look at the ways we as a society look at large numbers of homeless people and describe it as a "problem". We talk about it, more out of fear that we will be a part of that "problem". When it comes into focus as we pass by others who are homeless because they can't provide for themselves or their families, we often turn away.
We seem to value money as a "measurement" of our worth, and with it being so elusive or being sought by others in whatever ways possible, we lose the satisfaction that comes with the worth we provide to others in our labors and time. We also lose the satisfaction of challenging ourselves to push harder and learn more and expand our horizons as an individual, a society and as the human race.
A 21 year old kid once told me, "We (as a society) only move forward at the speed of our slowest members." I recall (in my automation days) disputing that, thinking that automation would solve so many problems and make us a happier people.
I now think that kid was much smarter than I could have imagined.
epilogue:
The cannery was shut down due to the regulations associated with the replacement of a boiler and because of overwhelming requirements associated with food production making it worthwhile only for automated methods of production to be viable. Thousands no longer have an opportunity to serve others in helping others to eat through their efforts.
I work in an environment where technology has multiplied the ability of others to do much more... but I see the loss of initiative in so many who do the least am
...if you take control of the money away from central banks and put it back in the hands of the people, individually and collectively. Hey, I like robots; I think everybody ought to own at least 1 or 2. ;-)
the industrial revolution just put people out of work. Than about 50-80 years latter other tech caught up (plus two World Wars thinned the herd) and things got better.
There's a reason the Luddites existed and it wasn't because they were prototypical Amish. They lost their livelihoods and were starving in the streets. It takes decades for a society to adjust to these kinds of changes and in the meantime there's poverty, death and war. The difference today is information is widespread enough that we can see it coming and react if we want.
Or we could just keep telling ourselves everything is fine because eventually it might correct itself. But think of it like this: When in our lives has a complex problem been best solved by ignoring it and letting it sort itself out?
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because now heartless machine scan do a better job of being heartless with other opeles money than they can and it's their jobs m\ priviliged lifestyle in danger.
The corollary to automation, though, seems to be an increasing amount of wealth concentration in the hands of people who seem to validate that there's no such thing as "enough".
Wealth is not a finite resource. You aren't being done out of anything because Joe Bloggs is wealther than Dindu Nuffins.
every time it's been tried it's just resulted in the most violent psychopath in charge. What's needed is a society where nobody's left behind. Where nobody resorts to violence. If you've got enough disenfranchised folks without access to food and shelter that they're resulting to violence they'll be organized by somebody and used to seize power. Just like it did in China and the USSR.
You've got a chance right now, but it means voting while you can and voting for candidates that will take care of those teaming masses before they become some Demagogue's weapon.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
lower the full time hours and add an X2 OT level also remove healthcare from jobs.
The problem with robots is not that they will take jobs, automation and technology has taken jobs for a long time. The problem is that we can't figure out what specific job robots will take, so we can transition over to jobs that humans do better at.
The experts need to actually explain to the non robot experts, what job are at risk and which aren't. We shouldn't all need to become trained robot experts to figure this out.
AI still has to be specialized and catered to various tasks. But it probably won't be long until its been catered to a lot of things.
I have a pretty good, well-paid job, and it recently hit me like a ton of bricks that this won't last forever. I just got a substantial pay increase and I rarely have anything to do. However my role is kind of like That Boilermaker Story which is why they keep me around, but for how much longer?
Heck I could probably make a basic neural net to do my job for me.. idea setting in!
I think you're being a bit too idealistic of humanity there. Humans are overwhelmingly mediocre. Look at popular music and books, look at your average programming assignment, look at the iterative nature of research in many fields... Yes, there absolutely is a fraction of humanity which is creative or groundbreaking, but that leaves us with 90% of the workforce being redundant. The remaining 10% will create something new which will be immediately integrated into the mass producing AI systems.
The question becomes whether we could eventually make everyone equally creative and brilliant and all that. I doubt it.
The economy is a competition for resources. I have to convince someone with resources to give me some portion of those resources in a transaction. For example, someone has a car with a problem and I can fix it. I bargain with them to give me a certain amount of money to fix their car. I've grown some corn: I convince people to part with some amount of money and then I give them a portion of the corn. A panhandler tries to prevail on my empathy so that I'll give him some money. And so on. In the case of governments, the government collects taxes (or issues debt which may be purchased by entities with money, or in some cases, by the central bank which prints money and buys the debt), and then I bargain with the government to give me some of that revenue.
An entity can create physical or virtual goods, or services that people value. A farmer grows crops; a barber provides haircuts; Apple builds iPhones; game companies create virtual objects in the game which can be purchased for cash; companies can create stock (class A, B or C) to be sold on the open market; and so on.
The problem is that we're moving to a more consolidated goods-and-services (i.e. value) creation model. This also happened at the dawn of the industrial age.
At the dawn of the industrial age, machines obviated the need for people. See the famous story about John Henry versus the steam hammer. And thus the owner of the machine created the value which people previously provided. And thus the owner of the machine (i.e. the owner of capital - the capitalist) was able to accrue an outsize amount of value, that which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
At the dawn of the automation age, once again, we see machines obviating the need for people. And once again the owners of those machines will be able to accrue an outsize amount of value, which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
So: inspecting how humanity reacted to the dawn of the industrial age (not well I might add) can give us ideas about how to deal with automation, robots and AI going forward.
Try it before you claim that it can't work. People without empathy are looking for those who can be manipulated emotionally. Surround yourself with people who recognize such behaviour for what it is, they'll go hunting for prey elsewhere. It's what they do. It's what they need. And with enough people, there's the whole herd immunity thing going, protecting even those who would be open to exploitation on their own.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
As automation and AI take over more and more "work", we must push for, not an increase of minimum wage, which only accelerates the problem, but a decrease in the work week. Eliminate salary for all employees who are not C-level management. Reduce the work week to 6h for 4 days. You increase the value of something by making it more scarce. As AI and automation take over menial tasks like transportation of goods and people, the one two resources that are still uniquely human are empathy and creativity. AI can be programmed to emulate creativity (music etc.) but emulation is not the same as inherent creativity. When AI starts creating new things, not [derivative works, mixes, combinations etc of previous work], then we will have reached the Star Trek fiction where socialism will be implemented due to the elimination of any need for any human to actually do work. Hopefully we will have starships by then so we can go exploring instead... or neural interface VR so we can go indulge our dragon slaying/other fantasies. Alternatively, someone may invent the Drowd (a neural stimulator of the brain's pleasure centers, from Larry Niven's universe) and we may all pleasure ourselves into extinction.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Ladies and gentlemen, our resident Libertarian/AnCap lunatic! (Note: some people like stability over growth).
CGP Grey once posted a moderately informative video about voting systems. He also posted a good video about Tolkien's mythology. Outside of those two areas, I'm not sure why so many people now look to Grey as an expert on subjects like the future of technology and the economic impact of machine intelligence. Is it the accent? Is it the never-shows-his-face-on-camera mystique?
Anyway, keep talking about computers taking all the jobs. Just pretend like income equality was never an issue.
Oh yeah, he had a really bad one about how Star Trek teleporters might work. Freshman philosophy term paper quality.
When automation came along and horses were replaced their population dropped by 90% in a very short period of time (with millions being slaughtered at knackeries long before their time).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So? Humans are not all the same; there will always be an elite.
That explanation doesn't work, since there were plenty of labor shortages all over Europe and the US that did not end feudalism (slavery). What ended feudalism was that automation required more skilled and educated workers, and you only get those when people can reap the rewards of investing in themselves.
You're utterly divorced from reality. It would also be irrelevant even if it were true, since what matters is the distribution of absolute wealth, not relative wealth.
And so... what? How does that hurt you?
The majority of investments are institutional, meaning they are for securing everybody's retirement, savings, and insurance.
Again, you're confusing "wealth" and "money".
There is some amount of labor in the country that money can command. If these companies are not investing their cash, it simply means that other people can buy that labor more cheaply.
That's useless reasoning by example. In fact, what you ought to look at is the labor force participation rate. Now, that is lower than it should be, but the reasons for that are primarily government policies that make it more rational not to work, including massive subsidies for education.
The reason the storefronts are empty are simple: a lot of those stores aren't needed anymore, and a lot of cities have adopted policies that are outright hostile to retail (like minimum wage and high taxes).
That's a common explanation in England, but it doesn't hold water when you look at continental history. No, the end of feudalism is due to technological developments, including automation. In particular, automation and technology required more educated workers, but workers generally only invest effort in their own education if they can reap the rewards. Under feudalism (or slavery) they did not. Once it because more profitable for businesses to use machines, they needed educated labor, and for that, they needed a free workforce.
What you call "democracy" isn't democracy, it's socialism or fascism, namely economic redistribution via the state on a massive scale. That has never worked.
To be replaced by new forms of labor that are a lot more valuable. You know, just like the value of the labor of a skilled mechanic is much higher than the value of the labor of some cobbler or blacksmith.
Yes, human employment will be almost completely eliminated and lets do it faster! What these folks have not realized is that laws, beliefs, moral systems and entire economic systems must be reworked, replaced or eliminated. It is not an issue as long as resistance does not cause the cures to be applied too late. Businesses will be the only ones who are taxable and individuals will be paid by government and not expected to work. And yes, change is painful but this time you will no longer be a slave to earning enough money to do well. My prediction is that teachers will be the first to go. After all can't one eighth grade history teacher teach every kid in America over the net? Brick and mortar schools will only be needed by families that have failed where there is not a parent to make certain the kid stays at the computer. Single parents will need traditional schools but other parents will not. Social strife can be a real issue. Do you want to pay for school buildings simply because some people can't maintain a marriage?
This is the reason why concentration of wealth is not good, they have too much free time and resources and no matter how strange, stupid or wtf their visions become, they can and will impose them to the rest of the world and do serious harm to the whole world (like it happens now all the time), and soon they will try to "take humanity out of the alien simulation" by making a black hole in the sun.
They seem to spend watching too much TV and reading sci-fi.
Because they know that they will also be replaced by a computer.
Computers can look at financial data and spit out an answer in mere seconds, when it would take a regular person days/weeks to untangle. Plus, all they ask is for electricity.
about a decade ago: http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
Glad to see more and more people are thinking about this.
And thanks for the laugh: "Push for a universal basic income for your robot AI" has to be one of the funniest things I've read on Slashdot.
And that idea is not that far fetched: http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/...
"Robots and software persons are entitled to protection of life and liberty. But does "life" imply the right of a program to execute, or merely to be stored? Denying execution would be like keeping a human in a permanent coma â" which seems unconstitutional. Do software persons have a right to data they need in order to keep executing? Can robot citizens claim social benefits? Are unemployed robo-persons entitled to welfare? Medical care, including free tuneups at the government machine shop? Electricity stamps? Free education? Family and reproductive rights? Don't laugh. A recent NASA technical study found that self-reproducing robots could be developed today in a 20-year Manhattan-Project-style effort costing less than $10 billion (NASA Conference Publication 2255, 1982)."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
from 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette by American writer Jack Williamson. Willamson's influence for this story was the aftermath of World War II and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run."[1]"
"With Folded Hands
AIs in that story helpfully decide to protect us from all possible short-term physical risk..
Also A Logic Named Joe (more on human nature):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
More hopeful:
Two Faces of Tomorrow:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/boo...
The Culture series
EarthCent Ambassador series
Old Guy Cybertank series
Player Piano I feel is a bit silly in some ways (even as it makes some good points relative to social structures today). A basic income would take care of most of the issues in that society instead of make-work low-status jobs. The book also ignores how raising children well (especially in the most important early years) takes about as much time as you can put into it -- ass can a desire to learn, and a desire to create your own local subsistence processes for fun, learning, community, and security.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
That's a bit like plot in this parable I created seven years ago:
"The Richest Man in The World"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
The richest man in the world uses monopolies and robotics to expand to more monopolies (including owning the food supply as well as the government which compliantly expands his monopolies further) until all the wealth in the world is owned by just one person (and his robots). As both in the USA recently and in the story, many people argued the solution to widespread unemployment was cut social benefits along with lowering taxes to promote investment -- but the robots still got all the jobs.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Interesting reading. I too wonder how many people would be happier with a reduced income and more time to do things they want to do. Retired people are a good example - volunteering fulfills the need for social contact,relationships, and relevancy (money can't really buy none of those), as well as building a stronger sense of community in an era where it's harder than ever because of all the electronic distractions. It also can't buy the fruits of the labour of volunteers, who do it for free. And if the organizers try to charge for volunteer labour, the labour just goes elsewhere, keeping marginal labour costs at zero in a volunteer (or gift) economy.
Once most of your free time is taken up interacting with others you don't really have much need for bling to make you feel good or junk entertainment to fill in idle time.
Sounds good to me. I know the volunteering I do is more fulfilling than anything I've ever been paid to do because I can see the results in other people's lives every week, and the sense of camaraderie and unity of goals.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Central bancks have the solution at hand. Instead of lending almost-free money to banks, which are supposed to inject it in the economy, they could just lend almost-free money to people. At least try it for once.
Bank tellers were worried about ATMs taking their jobs since the 70s. Funny, there are bank branches everywhere, and they all still seem to have human tellers! It seems that for jobs other than the very routine cash withdrawals and deposits, you still need a person.
So yes, some teller jobs were lost. But I don't think we've suffered an ATM apocalypse. I don't think this wave of automation will end employment any more than all the other waves since the printing press eliminated most printing block carving jobs.
What we still haven't figured out is how to run a society that doesn't put your job as the central element of your life.
That goes beyond economy. Yes, economically we haven't figured out how to run Utopia. For all of history humans have dreamed about a life where you don't have to work, and all essentials, like food and water, sorry, honey and milk, get provided to you. Now we are closer than ever to that dream, and we have no idea what to do with it.
But also from a social and identity perspective. We still identify people with their jobs. Like that is the one thing you need to know about them. Heck, people identify themselves with their job, and sudden unemployment is psychologically dangerous because of that.
So far, the solution has been to find new jobs. Ok, machines put people out of jobs, lets make them machine maintenance people instead. Ok, computers automate desk jobs, lets make them programmers instead. I'm sure someone will make the people automated away with AI into AI teachers or something. Not enough people are thinking laterally.
Maybe we don't need jobs for a working society, maybe we don't need jobs to understand who we are? Maybe this whole "omg it will put people out of jobs" is a big strawman? And so what if it does?
The whole panic distracts us from the main question: Who should profit from the automation? So far, the profits are unevenly distributed. We already know that most people don't think the level of inequality is ok. Most of us are fine with some inequality, but not with the "1000 times your income" level of inequality we face today. If the CEO is a smart guy, it's fine that he makes in a month what I make in a year. But today, in some big corporations, the CEO makes in a month what the low-earners will make in their entire working life.
It's time that we have a serious discussion about who gets the profits generated by the robot that replaces you. Right now, that profit goes to everyone, except you. But why? Because we are still thinking about the economy the way that we did 100,1000 or 10,000 years ago. That labor somehow matters. But in world where labor is done by robots, it doesn't.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
... so now some people are affected that "count".
We really need to rethink this whole mess on a global scale.
Robots don't buy cars and AIs don't buy financial products.
The writing is on the wall, but we're still accelerating towards it
hoping the fine print will provide a solution.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Automation displaces workers, it does not destroy those people's ability to earn any living at all. Advancing technology brings with it new opportunities for different jobs: jobs which usually weren't even imagined prior to those innovations. For example: back in the early days of elevators, a person had to be paid to stay in each elevator and operate them whenever people needed to use them. Those days are long gone, as anybody can push a button to initiate the otherwise automated sequence of moving people between floors. Did the former elevator operators all find themselves unable to earn a living, and starve to death? Probably yes, but that's beside the point.
... of an economic system that owes its entire existence to a rape and pillage mentality. As long as human beings continue to pursue this obsessive compulsion to value imaginary things like money over real human needs, the outcome is so predictable. Stupidity will rule until humans despoil and poison themselves to death. Good riddance. Fuck off and die.
PlaynBass
See subject. -T
The labor is more valuable because it's more productive, but that increased productivity per worker is incompatible with full employment if consumption doesn't grow 1:1 with it. Peak consumption due to natural resource limits presents a problem.
"Full employment" is a concept related to unemployment rate, a short term, politically motivated measure. It has no long term economic meaning. By historical standards, we are actually far beyond "full employment" today.
There is no evidence for that either. It's certainly not reflected either by labor costs or commodities prices.
The problem with what you say is that we don't know where exactly that 10 percent will come from. But they must come out of the 100 percent. And ten percent of 100 is 10, but ten percent of only 10 is 1. Society passes millions of children through math to get a relatively few scientists and engineers. You need a lot of participants to get the few creatives is what i am saying. I recently read someone wanted to shut down radiology schools because computers are being trained to read images much faster. Fine. Where do the new ideas come from?
E Proelio Veritas.