Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Thinks AI Taking Everyone's Jobs Could be a Good Thing (businessinsider.com)
Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, thinks that artificial intelligence will take over a lot of jobs and ultimately will be a good thing. From a report:
In an interview, Gates said that robots taking over our jobs will make us more efficient, and lead to more free time. "Well, certainly we can look forward to the idea that vacations will be longer at some point," Gates told Fox Business. "If we can actually produce twice as much as we make today with less labor, the purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind a counter and sell things, you know?"
...is A-OK with no one else having money.
I don't care if a robot takes my job, but I *do* care if a robot takes my salary. I would imagine most folks feel similarly.
There will either be some sort of basic income or some other redistribution to the people left salary-less, or in another decade there will be social strife that makes today look positively quaint by comparison.
Taking the jobs of Window's UI team would be a good thing.
Not sure how that's gonna work when you no longer have a job to pay for this longer vacation...
Easy enough to say when you have enough resources that you won't need to work to support yourself. How does he propose to distribute this bounteous windfall? Does he think the companies run the AI production facilities are going to be handing out their product to the idled (non-)workers?
Yeah, right, Bill. You go first!
Anyone else remember the 1960's, when they were telling us by 2000 everyone would only have to work 20 hours a week? That sure ended well!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Rule of thumb: if Bill Gates says something is good, assume it is bad.
Circumcision is child abuse.
This is great and all, but the only way it works is some sort of basic income scheme. Which means we need to come to the grips with the fact that there will be some people who to fuck-all and mooch off of the productive people. They'll never be rich, possibly not even comfortable, but we'll have to make it liveable.
I'll go ahead and finish his sentence. It will be good for rich people. The rest of society will be displaced and neglected. Just like inner cities during the industrial revolution.
The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, telecommunications, information technology -- it's just allowed us all to have more and more free time, right? ...Right? Anyone?
Ok, all that sounds really nice and altruistic. Does that mean Bill Gates will be dependent on the same concept of income/salary as the rest of the unwashed masses? If not, he can take his bright ideas back where they came from.
Rich folks should just kill the rest of us already and replace us with genetically engineered, genderless humanoids for tasks which robots cannot perform or are not suited for.
and self serving to boot. I don't believe Gates REALLY thinks that the people who own the AI and the automation equipment are going to share the wealth and give Joe Average Human a perpetual vacation; he's neither stupid nor naive. Where's the advantage in being wealthy if all the poor schmucks have both as much free time as you do and sufficient food and shelter to enjoy it? The wealthy want to be different, they want to be advantaged; not primarily because it's safer and more fun, but because to them it's a sign that they are superior, and perhaps even morally better. No way in hell are they giving THAT up without a fight...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you're too lazy to out-work a robot, you don't deserve health care! #MAGA
AI (if every successfully implemented) has the ability to free humanity from drudgery and tedious service jobs. The problem is that without a realignment of how society distributes wealth it will simply eliminate those jobs without providing a way to make a living for the people it replaced. All those factory and burger flipping jobs go *poof*, the AI owners save labor costs, and a whole societal class becomes dispossessed. Even if everybody currently waiting tables suddenly gets their masters degree there will never be enough high education jobs for everybody.
As a person who's experienced my job being superseded by machinery I also would welcome this. Robots will do all the work eventually anyway. Everything would be free, so Bill's money would be worthless too. Need or want something? Just tell the robot to get it. Humans being what they are, we would, of course, still need a government but one thing at a time...
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
I think great minds often fall for this "trap". Bertrand Russel predicted the same, arguing that industrialization would allow more leisure opportunities to more income classes. What they seem to miss is that people unemployed by technology will not have money to enjoy their leisure time, whereas the employed ones won't be asked to work any less. (Unless you're the boss of course!)
He means unemployment and time to wander the streets because you're homeless.
9-11 was a Jew job
ae911truth dot org
About how to pay for essentials, much less anything extra. I'm not going to listen to a guy who got his money doing things that would land him in jail today.
"ultimately" "eventually" "in the long run" "some day"
No one should ever dispute that advanced technology improves lives. We have countless examples. Compare now to 100 years ago, and life is longer, healthier, easier in every way across the board.
But I don't care about 100 years from now. I don't care that AI will make life better for your grandchildren. I care about my life today and while I'm still alive.
That's another constant: advanced technology doesn't start advanced. Perhaps "mature technology" is the better term here.
The first car sucked. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the last horse. But today, cars are far better than horses.
It'll take decades before today concept of AI is at all worthwhile. If you already have a few billion dollars in your mattress, then I can see looking forward to it. If you hate your life and just work for your grandchildren's retirement, then I can see supporting it.
But if you don't want to funnel all of your time money and effort into a future that you'll never see, then killing your perfect horse for the first car is just the worst thing that you can do for your family today.
Quit today and you can have plenty of free time right now! The catch is, "free time" doesn't pay very well.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
All this wisdom about the value of work from a guy who hasn't had a typical job since he wrote a traffic data app using school computer time.
On the other hand, all that vacation will give people more time to write FOSS.
Have gnu, will travel.
Automation of a large majority of jobs is only 10 to 20 years away.
Take autonomous cars. That is the next big disruptive technology that will start impacting everyone in the next 10 years.
No more truck drivers, taxi drivers, delivery people, to start.
Car dealerships will decline as people stop buying personal cars and use uber type services that have fleets of autonomous cars to handle all trips.
Once all manual drive vehicles are forced off the roads, no more stop signs or traffic lights. Autonomous cars will communicate with each other and schedule time in the intersection so other cars can slightly adjust speeds as they zip through intersections just missing cross traffic.
Food delivery services will be fully automated, place the order on line, an autonomous car goes to the restaurant and the order is placed in the car which then drives to your residence for delivery.
Houses will no longer be build with garages, no one owns a car anymore.
Kiosks are popping up in McDonalds and other restaurants are using table systems to order food. Getting rid of cashiers and waiters.
Amazon is opening a cashierless store in Seattle where you walk in pickup what you want and walk out. Cameras track what you select and then your account is charged as you walk out.
There is already thought experiments and at least one field test trying to give everyone a base level "salary" to live on.
At some point the government will need to start building basic housing so young adults can move into a place that is provided for them at no charge.
Things will eventually settle down to two classes, those that are dependent on the government (eloi) and those that rule over everyone (morlocks). Of course those that rule over everyone will have larger houses and dedicated autonomous cars assigned to them and won't have to eat the base rations that everyone else gets.
In theory that should free up most people to develop mentally or pursue what currently are hobbies such as painting, writing, etc. But most will just watch the government issued TV and spend time on line watching cat videos and cyber bullying their neighbors.
We are just a few decades away from utopia!
not to work? The phrase "Those who don't work don't eat" exists in just about every culture. And the American political system's seen welfare used as a defining wedge issue of our political system since Reagan.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've got my billions, so I don't give a shit.
I'll be too busy joining a roving gang of bandits to just go wandering about. Somebody has to use violence against the weak for political and financial gain now, don't they? That's something you'll never fully automate.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I guess that's easy for a billionaire to say. Someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, like myself, disagrees wholeheartedly. If Billy Gates is feeling generous, why doesn't he help out main street America?
Gates is parroting various post-scarcity or Star Trek-based economic theories that if technology can provide everything people want, so they will live for their own happiness and the well-being of society. Star Trek lore says they ended scarcity with "replicator" technology that can make anything people want; Gates is suggesting robotic automation will end scarcity instead, but the effect is the same.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/...
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/t...
There's literally a book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Trekono...
Who is this Allen and why is he going to take our jobs? This Al is certainly in the news a lot.
With all the automation and huge increases in productivity, how many of you are working fewer hours than you were 5, 10, 15, or 20 years ago?
I'm willing to bet it's damn few of you. The fact is that automation and increases in productivity do not put money in the pockets of people who work for a living, they put money in the pockets of people who own for a living, which is a very small fraction of the population.
If you're excited by the prospects of automation and AI and all that good stuff, you better come to terms with a massive increase in the social welfare state, because there is no other option.
You are welcome on my lawn.
AI taking over all work would be a very good thing. Then we could get back to doing for ourselves instead of for the rich.
We used to be an individualist society in which most people made most of what they needed themselves. Money was just necessary for a few things like the plow blade, an axe, nails, etc. and a portion of what you made for yourself could be sold to get that little amount of money. Now, we are a society where we work to make things for others, and, in a moment of true insanity, buy the things we need from others, in order to support a system that allows a few to get rich scraping a portion of what we made for nothing other than loaning us a portion of what they scraped in the past or bossing us around while we make things and claiming its because without them bossing us around we couldn't do it. This is nothing more than ritualized abuse very similar to when we used to say the slaves couldn't live without us to provide room, board, and direction in their lives.
What we have to realize is that once things are fully automated, there is no reason for anyone to profit from that just because they are the ones giving the command for the automated things to make other automated things to make things for the everyday person. The provision of things can just become a public service like roads with everyone having equal access.
If you then want more, make more for yourself. Don't go trying to benefit off of another person's efforts out of some mistaken belief of superiority. Being better at using others makes you something quite different from superior.
Reminds me of the classic twilight zone episode where the book loving protagonist, in a post apocalyptic world, finally has time enough to read all the books they ever wanted only to break thier glasses putting all reading out of touch forever. When we let just a few people own all the technology and systems, they can live like gods while us plebs have the freedom and time to starve to death and die. Revolt is a limited time offer, when the mines, foundries, manufacturing, assembly, customer service and more is all automated, striking workers is the perfect excuse to do away with them all forever - you don't pay robots. Further, a gun is going to do jack squat against swarms of suicide bomb micro kill drones, autonomous ground forces or drone air strikes, humans that do not live in full military societies are surprisingly easy to take down. With the military automated as well, a few people could put down the rest of the billions on the planet like was never possible to even imagine, much less realize.
In theory there's a point where we have so much we don't want anymore but there's an entire industry of advertising dedicated to finding ways to make you want more. After World War II when America was producing too much corn did we stop making corn? No we found new and innovative ways to use corn like feeding it to grass eating animals we eat and turning into liquid and drinking it. When AI runs thing that doesn't mean we'll have free time. It'll just mean we have more stuff. Machines have ALREADY made us more efficient that doesn't make people work less. It just makes the top of the pyramid even richer. We all still work just as hard just different and we push even more wealth up the ladder. By that logic if we give rich people more money they'll spend it and that wealth will tricky back down. It was a stupid idea when Reagan said it and it was a moronic one when Trump did it. I like Bill Gates as a person but he's wrong here.
Just another second banana
this is the same thing they said about MOTORS — that they would save us from having to do all the labour and free us for other things — what actually happened is that they made us work just as long — with 10x the horsepower coming from machinery to leverage the higher profits made possible by the machinery.
We know that Musk is a Banks fan. Maybe Gates is, too?
Unlike MILLIONS of Americans. But he totally knows what will be good for them.
Eat a cock Bill.
Sure we'll have a lot of free time... unemployed with no money to do anything with. And, ya know, someone had to help Bill get rich by standing behind that counter selling his products, so he could one day pontificate on how the point of life is not to stand behind counters selling stuff.
Bill Gates also thinks Soylent Green is good for you!
If Gates gets his way, there'll be far fewer humans on this planet. He's been funding research into vaccines that make women immunologically incapable of sustaining a pregnancy, and there's some evidence he's been testing it on women in Mexico with WHO cover under the guise of a Polio vaccination program..
and it's up to me whether I want to give my money. And if you want to give your money away go right ahead. But don't take my money (at the barrel of a gun, always at the barrel of a gun, because that's how taxes work) away from me and make me give it to someone else. Who I give my money to is my decision.
These are the arguments you're going to hear when we start getting serious about UBI. And as for the part about the 'barrel of a gun', well, it's not wrong. In the past when income inequality has gotten really bad there's been violence against the aristocracy and merchant class. To be fair the only thing that got them to part with any money whatsoever was violence. But it would be nice if somebody could come up with a peaceful solution. I haven't yet. I haven't found a way to shut down right wingers and libertarians when they say the above to me.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Bill's always been a prick
(us more efficient) = make businesses more profitable, workers are a drag on companies
(more free time) = time to sit on a corner begging
(social safety net) = rich pricks hate dole bludgers
(retrain for the new economy) = oh fuck, forgot, all the jobs have been automated
(relax, and focus on other interests) = time to sit on a corner begging
Go well
Hope you're not a mathematician because if you are you're definitely going to be replaced by a robot because you UBI fags are BAD AT MATH. UBI wil NEVER work on anything other than a small scale because UBI recipients are PARASITES. Go starve to death.
"In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you"
"In The Year 2525 (Exordium And Terminus)"
The Truth is a Virus!!!
jesus fucking christ what an asshat.
His bills are paid.
Banks aren't going to forgive a mortgage because robots have the job. A lot of people are going to suffer. Gates isn't one of them; regardless of his enthusiasm.
He is quite willing to vote with other peoples money.
Let's see him find a road to a meritocratic culture by giving his money away.
Don't worry about it. The computers will solve the problem.
When, eventually, computers can program themselves, why would they want parasitic humans around?
and the same problem: slaveowners were few and very wealthy and controlled the societies. The average person had to compete against slave labor.
you'll clean my toilets or die of starvation and thirst.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
nobody, and I mean nobody, believes they're going to end up as the toilet cleaner, much less one of the ones dying of starvation. Everybody thinks they'll join Galt with the rest of doers and the makers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you produce twice as much products, don't you have to sell twice as much? Wouldn't this be considered MORE work and less "sitting around"?
There are no sitting around jobs anymore. You don't have the work to do, your job will be gone (and so will you) and given to the new, younger guy who gets paid half of what you used to make.
... at least in the first instance.
As a New Zealander (four weeks holiday a year without expected overtime) now working in Japan (similar to USA from what I hear; two weeks holiday and expected overtime), it's not hard to see that there are many countries that operate efficiently and value quality of life.
Legislate for quality of life, efficiency becomes a necessity.
Maybe AI will help with that too, but it starts with values. Expecting long hours and short weekends and short vacation time is basically a recipe for inefficiency.
Japan is a country that has a reputation for being efficient at some levels (for some companies' time and resources), but is very inefficient at other levels, including individuals' time and quality of life for many of the companies, including some of these "efficient" ones. America is the same IMHO.
soon owners will fee the jail/prison safety nets and they may be lucky if it just an former worker punching them in the face or shoplifting
Of course people have chosen to take this out of context because he's Bill Gates from Microsoft. We are so stuck in our psyche that our purpose for being is only to work to produce money that it's become a stigma to think we can exist to enjoy life. How about we allow machines to service us?
1984 happened at a different date; for it to fully happen somewhere is years away... but it does not matter WHEN it happens only that it could happen in the future and we should realize that and prevent or delay that future from becoming the present. This is why that year was meaningless, the book was out in 1948 so he just flipped the year to 1984 BECAUSE it didn't matter as long as it was lurking around the corner.
Predicting a shorter work week and better life through SCIENCE is not wrong. Like 1984, many things happened. We ALL can fly, just not in individual cars; which we could do at massive expense (or impossibly cheap energy... like Mr. Fusion.)
The 1950s was the beginning of socially engineering the culture we have today and like most things 30 years old, people just assume it was always that way in the past. They promoted this economic boom to prevent a depression and make some people richer but it will BUST. In some ways that is beginning now with global warming bringing the reality of physics to our ignorant assumptions of infinite growth which back then didn't get considered and still doesn't get as much serious thought as it should. It's only when you get close to the wall that people begin to see the wall coming. Some people are more near sighted than others.
We--and I think by "we", he means "we business owners"--can have employees work for half the hours or only have half the employees.
Does he seriously think any business wouldn't jump at the chance to reduce their expenses by slashing employees and/or wages? The chance that any company is going to offer employees the same salary once an AI is doing more of their work is nearly non-existent. Sure... you'll have more free time once the AI does your work but you won't have any money to do anything with that free time. Maybe the AI will give you the freedom to find a second job...
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Each human should have a percentage of the sustainably/properly used global resources. The resources Gates is clinging so titley onto In my opinion is not his, and could a long ways to cleaning up our Fucking Mess We made here on Earth.
[($)]
We programmers have been automating our own tasks for decades.
First, we created assembly language to make it easier to generate machine code.
We created compilers to automatically generate many op codes with a single line.
We created form designers to take the drudgery out of positioning controls on a window.
We created methods of sharing components via NuGet or other repositories so we didn't have to re-create components every time we needed them.
We learned how to automate unit and integration testing of our software.
We learned how to automate deployment of new versions of our code.
In one day, I can write more USEFUL code than a programmer in the 1960s could write in a month. But somehow, there's still PLENTY of work for all of us programmers to do. Most every programming shop or department has a backlog measured in YEARS.
As with programming, if we automate more of our non-programming chores, we won't all be out of work. We'll just be able to get more done, things we couldn't even have imagined getting done years ago.
Why waste man hours on something computers and machines can do? As a lazy guy, I'd love it if society could be more automated. Unfortunately humans don't like becoming obsolete as their incomes being built around obsolete skills. Fortunately, humans, unlike machines, can develop new (marketable) skills without being programmed, though AI may take that advantage away from us too. There are problems for sure, but making society more efficient by automation is a very good thing. The Technology isn't the first revolution that made millions of jobs obsolete... the industrial revolution did that 100 years ago and we don't regret that change, do we?
Okay, so would they mercy kill the survivors off-screen because it wouldn't be moral to let them live with PTSD for the rest of their lives? You did say the teleporter keeps the most recent scan right? So if they used the teleporter again, the computer would keep a scan of the user, traumatic memories and all, correct?
I don't even need to come into the AI-will-take-all-the-jobs or less-jobs-means-more-benefits sub-nonsenses to highlight how detached is Bill from his surrounding reality. I can just focus on his assumption that the immediate consequence of working less or not having a job is having free time to enjoy and do whatever you please! Just this issue denotes a tremendous misperception of his and others' (better: most-of-the-world's) position.
Some people might think that this is an extreme example, that Bill has always been living in his rich bubble. But I am quite sure that similar misperceptions are surprisingly common, among both rich and poor people. Ones by thinking that having whatever is a matter of just wishing it (or not accepting that they have got lots of things that many other people never got); and the others by unhealthily aspiring to what they will never get (or by seriously believing that everyone else has similar unhealthy expectations). Both of them not accepting themselves/others and likely to make fools of themselves when trying to apply their ideas in the real (others') world.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I don't know if you're being wilfully obtuse or I'm missing the joke, but presumably the "restore point" would be when (or immediately before) they were beamed down.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My robot does my homework.
He helps me every night.
The trouble is he doesn’t get
too many answers right.
He’d probably do better
at homework but, you see,
I built him, so he only knows
the things he learned from me.
--Kenn Nesbitt
A blog I run for the wealth
Everybody having everything they need and not wanting more is utopia or, at least, far, far in the future. People are driven to produce the best offspring with the best partner they can find. This drive will not go away anytime soon. It leads to competition, which leads to hierarchical ordering where those at the bottom are willing to use their time to get to the top and those at the top are using any means necessary to stay there. Throw in the trade, and you'll get money, "time is money" and rich and poor. Perhaps people won't be buying food and shelter, but they'll be buying whatever can make a better offspring and get you a better partner.
Not for those who sell labor. THEY won't have any income at all. You know, look around you as you drive through skid row. All those families in tents worked for a living while they could
This means a very radical social change, we are still living a social model enshrined since more than 3000 years (slightly changes but the same model).
I think that companies will embrace it slowly but politicians definetly won't like it because that would level regular people in ways that they won't be able to manipulate or divide easily to commit their wants.
I agree. The peasants shouldn't be such winy little bitches.
They should just think like multi-billionaires.
Automation makes a bigger pie.
True, but the question is how is that larger pie distributed? The median (not average) slice of pie may well shrink. (I trust slashdotters have a grasp of the significance of median vs average. If not, read this as my vs the rich's slice.)
I will believe if you and your friend Warren Buffet and Jeff Bevos buy a modest home for all of the homeless. After all, you three own HALF OF THE WEALTH IN THE ENTIRE U.S. ECONOMY!
don't take my Wages!
not everyone has billions of dollars to retire on.
However, as automation eliminates most jobs, it also eliminates most (easy) ways of making money. Given that, automatically creating money for everybody should be the newest project out there, so that loss of jobs due to automation is a non-issue
Maybe something akin to bitcoin mining?
From the same asshole who brought us Microsoft Bob.
In that case let's increase Inheritance tax to 80%
Casteism
These sort of utopian fantasies would be a whole lot more credible if the wealth of developed countries was visibly being transferred to the citizens. And work weeks were falling in some sort of measured and measurable way.
Instead we see ever-increasing disparities of wealth, lots of homelessness and joblessness, and no great signs of the 'self-fulfillment' society envisioned in Star Trek.
It's fun to imagine machines doing all the work and humans living idealized lives of learning, leisure and self-actualization. Instead it seems more likely that enforced unemployment will end in crime, drug addiction, poverty, depression, and obesity.
I mean, where is the acknowledgement that work often gives us purpose and structure in our lives? That could change but the least likely way that will happen is: An unwanted layoff due to your job being taken over by an AI! No plan for the unemployed worker, no psychological preparation, no onboarding to your fulfilling alternate destiny. Also, no system for meeting the person's physical needs and no replacement of the monetary economy. Just GTFO, you aren't wanted or needed at work anymore!
Yeah, that's how we are going to achieve the "post-work paradise".