Why will the wealthy become wealthier? Won't one of the controllers-of-capital use the productivity to undercut based on price? They won't be any wealthier than they are today.
There is no way 95% of people could go to college. Maybe 50%, maybe. Good luck with fixing an entire culture.
I won't fix it - it will fix itself, but only if it has to.
Consolidation will occur, the first movers will have such an advantage they will buy up their competition.
This is not new, though. Industries have moved toward consolidation since the corporation was invented - and maybe before that. Sometimes (ahem-Microsoft-ahem) we let it go on too long, but most of the time a monopoly gets stomped out.
So far creative work has been something no AI can do.
I don't expect that to last. People are using computers to figure out how the brain works. They can already model simple brains. Once they figure out how your specific brain works, they can make food that tastes perfect to you, make music that sounds perfect to you, etc. You won't be able to help it, because they will have you reverse engineered.
Either there needs to be a new economy of unimaginably trivial jobs
You just aren't using your imagination. More unfounded speculation follows: 1. The size of the labor pool could be reduced by increasing the number of years we spend in education, which is now necessary because unskilled labor is in low demand. 2. Automation will keep the cost of goods low. Some goods may drop in price. This frees money up to buy more luxury or more complicated goods. This requires more automation, which in turn employs more high-paying people. Just like photocopiers vastly increased the demand for copies, automation might vastly increase the demand for other kind of goods.
Am I worried? Sure. I've seen the same dystopian movies and read the same sci-fi that everyone else here has (well, maybe not... you people are into some weird shit...). That said, I'm also into history, and nothing about human history to this point leads me to conclude that the Luddites were on to something. Every technology has had losers, but with our society's belief in social security I think even the losers will be fairly well-off compared to past events.
If you honestly believe that all we need to do is "straighten out" our education problems by fixing only the educators you will be very disappointed by the results.
Did you stop reading my comment or something? LOL, I go on with: "...and seriously tackle the problems of educating people in poverty, and those who are unwilling or unable to educate their children." The schools are only half of the problem, and a big reason they are a problem at all is the population they are dealing with. We need to tackle the problem in a number of different ways. Changing the way we educate (and fund!) is one angle - another has to be direct intervention on the family level. We won't break the poverty cycle if we don't... break the poverty cycle!
Some people are not ever going to be capable of more than manual repetitive labor.
Some people, sure. But not "most people". I'll go so far as to say that 95% of people are probably biologically capable of going to college. We would need to straighten out our K-12 education problems first, and seriously tackle the problems of educating people in poverty, and those who are unwilling or unable to educate their children.
The owners will profit even more.
Unless we move to more consolidation and monopoly, I don't see why this would be the case. Robotic equipment doesn't magically remove competition - why should profit margins go up? If COGS go down, so will prices - not profits. Walmart will only be a single-digit percentage point profitable no matter what they do with robots.
Since we are just speculating on the unknowable future, I can get away with a bit of optimistic fun, right?:)
What if this increased productivity freed us up to have more education? What if we could devote the first 25 years of our life to purely academic pursuits? 30 years?
I'd argue that they will still have commercial value - I just don't pretend to be smart enough to know what value that is right now. I'm basing this on the history of productivity improvements. I share your fears, but also recognize that history is reassuring. It is natural for humans to fear the unknown.
and he types in the code. Then the next one... I would hang myself rather than do this job 8 hours a day.
And you wouldn't if you had the old job? You know, where letters come down a conveyor and you sort them into one of a few other conveyors? That's the exact same thing except you get paper cuts.
What is the plan for when no human need lift a finger?
I don't think you really "plan" for this sort of thing - it just happens. People will do something. It used to be that 90% of the population farmed... what was the plan for them when farming started becoming more efficient? There was no plan - they moved to cities in desperation and I'll be damned if entrepreneurs didn't figure out something to do with all of those new warm bodies. It'll be like that. It will suck for some and be awesome for others, and in the end I think people will find some way to feed themselves.
Robot designers? Robot systems integrators? Robot process engineers? Robot maintenance and field service engineers?
Increasing productivity has historically been good for us. Less human capital spent on turning bolts frees up more for doing cool stuff. I don't doubt that there will be short-term pain for people who used to perform unskilled repetitive labor - but honestly they were losing their jobs to East Asians anyway. Sadly, retraining programs don't appear to work very well, so we might very well be stuck with a huge population dependent on public assistance throughout the remainder of their lives. But that is the short term view - the long term view is probably just as bright as other massive changes in productivity have been.
This case is really the more relevant one to the 2nd amendment (which was drafted when the possibility of Britain deciding to reconquer the US was a very real concern.)
The problem is that the concept was abandoned before the 1700s ran out. They returned to the concept of a standing army after the militia idea proved ineffective.
I think gun advocates are barking up the wrong tree with the whole "overthrow the government" angle. I agree that is a silly case to make when you have rifles and they have tanks.
That said, you don't have dictatorships in Europe??? What??? I'll give you a pass on Belarus, but Spain wasn't a democracy until pretty recently. Still, it doesn't fit the narrative of a gunless population overrun by a dictator.
Some of the prepay carriers now sell the iPhone. The market has changed quite a bit, you might want to look into it.
Thanks for the links. T-Mobile is unique in that their prepay and post-pay cost the same and you get transparent financing of the phone. The financing is pretty reasonable, so you get your iPhone for only a $79 premium. That is, IF you really need unlimited. If you can get by on one of the $30 plans like I do, then you can save $40 every month.
AT&T has the same financing plan for AT&T "Next" as T-Mobile, so a pretty reasonable $79 premium, but you are stuck with a 20-month contract on a crappy plan. Or you can pay through the nose with their regular $100/month plan and get the phone for "free". I'm sure Verizon will be worse, but this is a terrible deal.
So essentially what we have is that violent crime fell everywhere, including the USA, but in America muggings are generally replaced with shootings.
People, broadly, do not get shot for robbery. I may have been exaggerating for effect, but roughly 1/3 of homicides are motivated by an argument of some kind. 1/5 come while committing a felony. The point is, you are unlikely to get shot in the US just walking down the street.
You'll note that they seem to do the poorest job in areas where people were told to evacuate, but didn't for whatever reason. I think there might be a connection.
I don't know if you are joking or not... some people really do think like this, despite pictures of people on their roof waiting for a Federal helicopter to pick them up.
when I'm going to be paying for a carrier contract anyway
Because the math has changed recently and pre-pay is now cheaper than post-pay, unless you have some special use case. The only network where you can use your "free" 5C is on Sprint.
But once you are on Sprint, you are stuck with a 2-year contract at $80/month (let's pretend there's not a bunch of extra fees and taxes for the moment). That gets you unlimited talk, text, and data on Sprint's network. Or you could do Boost on Sprint's network for $55/month initially, with $5 reductions every 6 months until you get to $40/month.
So you are paying an extra $231 for the post-pay on the same network, all just to get a "free" phone. And with pre-pay, you can walk away at any time and just sell the phone on eBay.
And are safer in general with less crime in general?
You might want to look at those crime stats again. The USA has a fuckload of homicides compared to Western Europe, especially by gun, but violent crime overall is not bad. And that's a minor miracle considering our public policy regarding the urban poor. So yes, in the US if you are involved with gang warfare, you stand a larger chance of being murdered than in Europe. On the other hand, if you are just walking down the street, you are a lot more likely to get mugged in Europe. So there you go.
Mac sales are failing because they are pricing themselves out the market
Their market share does not seem to be falling (or rising), so I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion.
Chrome OS is doing rather well on the PC.
That should only worry Apple when they encroach on the middle-to-high end of the market. So far, they sell netbook competitors.
Going forward as Apple turn their (not your) General purpose computers into electronics
While I agree that turning Macs into iOS devices would not be good for sales, I also do not see evidence that they will do this. I think they will continue to run arbitrary code for the foreseeable future.
Slashdot Mirror
Why will the wealthy become wealthier? Won't one of the controllers-of-capital use the productivity to undercut based on price? They won't be any wealthier than they are today.
There is no way 95% of people could go to college. Maybe 50%, maybe. Good luck with fixing an entire culture.
I won't fix it - it will fix itself, but only if it has to.
Consolidation will occur, the first movers will have such an advantage they will buy up their competition.
This is not new, though. Industries have moved toward consolidation since the corporation was invented - and maybe before that. Sometimes (ahem-Microsoft-ahem) we let it go on too long, but most of the time a monopoly gets stomped out.
So far creative work has been something no AI can do.
I don't expect that to last. People are using computers to figure out how the brain works. They can already model simple brains. Once they figure out how your specific brain works, they can make food that tastes perfect to you, make music that sounds perfect to you, etc. You won't be able to help it, because they will have you reverse engineered.
Either there needs to be a new economy of unimaginably trivial jobs
You just aren't using your imagination. More unfounded speculation follows:
1. The size of the labor pool could be reduced by increasing the number of years we spend in education, which is now necessary because unskilled labor is in low demand.
2. Automation will keep the cost of goods low. Some goods may drop in price. This frees money up to buy more luxury or more complicated goods. This requires more automation, which in turn employs more high-paying people. Just like photocopiers vastly increased the demand for copies, automation might vastly increase the demand for other kind of goods.
Am I worried? Sure. I've seen the same dystopian movies and read the same sci-fi that everyone else here has (well, maybe not... you people are into some weird shit...). That said, I'm also into history, and nothing about human history to this point leads me to conclude that the Luddites were on to something. Every technology has had losers, but with our society's belief in social security I think even the losers will be fairly well-off compared to past events.
If you honestly believe that all we need to do is "straighten out" our education problems by fixing only the educators you will be very disappointed by the results.
Did you stop reading my comment or something? LOL, I go on with: "...and seriously tackle the problems of educating people in poverty, and those who are unwilling or unable to educate their children." The schools are only half of the problem, and a big reason they are a problem at all is the population they are dealing with. We need to tackle the problem in a number of different ways. Changing the way we educate (and fund!) is one angle - another has to be direct intervention on the family level. We won't break the poverty cycle if we don't... break the poverty cycle!
Some people are not ever going to be capable of more than manual repetitive labor.
Some people, sure. But not "most people". I'll go so far as to say that 95% of people are probably biologically capable of going to college. We would need to straighten out our K-12 education problems first, and seriously tackle the problems of educating people in poverty, and those who are unwilling or unable to educate their children.
The owners will profit even more.
Unless we move to more consolidation and monopoly, I don't see why this would be the case. Robotic equipment doesn't magically remove competition - why should profit margins go up? If COGS go down, so will prices - not profits. Walmart will only be a single-digit percentage point profitable no matter what they do with robots.
every non-creative job can be done by a machine
Why not "creative" work?
Since we are just speculating on the unknowable future, I can get away with a bit of optimistic fun, right? :)
What if this increased productivity freed us up to have more education? What if we could devote the first 25 years of our life to purely academic pursuits? 30 years?
I'd argue that they will still have commercial value - I just don't pretend to be smart enough to know what value that is right now. I'm basing this on the history of productivity improvements. I share your fears, but also recognize that history is reassuring. It is natural for humans to fear the unknown.
and he types in the code. Then the next one... I would hang myself rather than do this job 8 hours a day.
And you wouldn't if you had the old job? You know, where letters come down a conveyor and you sort them into one of a few other conveyors? That's the exact same thing except you get paper cuts.
What is the plan for when no human need lift a finger?
I don't think you really "plan" for this sort of thing - it just happens. People will do something. It used to be that 90% of the population farmed... what was the plan for them when farming started becoming more efficient? There was no plan - they moved to cities in desperation and I'll be damned if entrepreneurs didn't figure out something to do with all of those new warm bodies. It'll be like that. It will suck for some and be awesome for others, and in the end I think people will find some way to feed themselves.
Robot designers? Robot systems integrators? Robot process engineers? Robot maintenance and field service engineers?
Increasing productivity has historically been good for us. Less human capital spent on turning bolts frees up more for doing cool stuff. I don't doubt that there will be short-term pain for people who used to perform unskilled repetitive labor - but honestly they were losing their jobs to East Asians anyway. Sadly, retraining programs don't appear to work very well, so we might very well be stuck with a huge population dependent on public assistance throughout the remainder of their lives. But that is the short term view - the long term view is probably just as bright as other massive changes in productivity have been.
LOOKS FINE ON MY COMPUTER!!!!
Yeah, those news choppers make great rescue machines.
This case is really the more relevant one to the 2nd amendment (which was drafted when the possibility of Britain deciding to reconquer the US was a very real concern.)
The problem is that the concept was abandoned before the 1700s ran out. They returned to the concept of a standing army after the militia idea proved ineffective.
That's OK, Windows-8 isn't very XP-like either.
It's kind of hilarious to read people singing the praises of XP, which most geeks regarded as a bloated "Fisher Price" version of 2000.
LOL, dude I think you are argumentatively agreeing with me...
And in Katrina, they were mostly Coast Guard.
I think gun advocates are barking up the wrong tree with the whole "overthrow the government" angle. I agree that is a silly case to make when you have rifles and they have tanks.
That said, you don't have dictatorships in Europe??? What??? I'll give you a pass on Belarus, but Spain wasn't a democracy until pretty recently. Still, it doesn't fit the narrative of a gunless population overrun by a dictator.
Some of the prepay carriers now sell the iPhone. The market has changed quite a bit, you might want to look into it.
Thanks for the links. T-Mobile is unique in that their prepay and post-pay cost the same and you get transparent financing of the phone. The financing is pretty reasonable, so you get your iPhone for only a $79 premium. That is, IF you really need unlimited. If you can get by on one of the $30 plans like I do, then you can save $40 every month.
AT&T has the same financing plan for AT&T "Next" as T-Mobile, so a pretty reasonable $79 premium, but you are stuck with a 20-month contract on a crappy plan. Or you can pay through the nose with their regular $100/month plan and get the phone for "free". I'm sure Verizon will be worse, but this is a terrible deal.
So essentially what we have is that violent crime fell everywhere, including the USA, but in America muggings are generally replaced with shootings.
People, broadly, do not get shot for robbery. I may have been exaggerating for effect, but roughly 1/3 of homicides are motivated by an argument of some kind. 1/5 come while committing a felony. The point is, you are unlikely to get shot in the US just walking down the street.
You'll note that they seem to do the poorest job in areas where people were told to evacuate, but didn't for whatever reason. I think there might be a connection.
I don't know if you are joking or not... some people really do think like this, despite pictures of people on their roof waiting for a Federal helicopter to pick them up.
when I'm going to be paying for a carrier contract anyway
Because the math has changed recently and pre-pay is now cheaper than post-pay, unless you have some special use case. The only network where you can use your "free" 5C is on Sprint.
But once you are on Sprint, you are stuck with a 2-year contract at $80/month (let's pretend there's not a bunch of extra fees and taxes for the moment). That gets you unlimited talk, text, and data on Sprint's network. Or you could do Boost on Sprint's network for $55/month initially, with $5 reductions every 6 months until you get to $40/month.
Sprint: $0 + 24x$80 = $1920
Boost: $549 + 6x$55 + 6x$50 + 6x$45 + 6x$40 = $1689
So you are paying an extra $231 for the post-pay on the same network, all just to get a "free" phone. And with pre-pay, you can walk away at any time and just sell the phone on eBay.
And are safer in general with less crime in general?
You might want to look at those crime stats again. The USA has a fuckload of homicides compared to Western Europe, especially by gun, but violent crime overall is not bad. And that's a minor miracle considering our public policy regarding the urban poor. So yes, in the US if you are involved with gang warfare, you stand a larger chance of being murdered than in Europe. On the other hand, if you are just walking down the street, you are a lot more likely to get mugged in Europe. So there you go.
Mac sales are failing because they are pricing themselves out the market
Their market share does not seem to be falling (or rising), so I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion.
Chrome OS is doing rather well on the PC.
That should only worry Apple when they encroach on the middle-to-high end of the market. So far, they sell netbook competitors.
Going forward as Apple turn their (not your) General purpose computers into electronics
While I agree that turning Macs into iOS devices would not be good for sales, I also do not see evidence that they will do this. I think they will continue to run arbitrary code for the foreseeable future.