Comment Re:and so society dies out (Score 1) 445
Of course, this will only last for so long before robots are better servants than humans. By this stage, we'll have the technology to build a true post-scarcity society (or rather, a society in which the only scarcity is energy, and even then there's enough to go around). The questions are, how will we manage this transition? And more importantly, how will we continue to give meaning to the lives of those who literally have no way in which they can contribute to society?
I read stories published in the 80's and 90's where the premise was that the robots take over all manual labor, allowing humans to do what they want. Humans continue to work in the positions that require thought - judges, etc. - but most labor intensive repetitive tasks are done by robots. The premise was that with the robots working, there was tremendous oversupply, and the poor must consume a great deal to consume what the robots produced. The mark of the very rich is that they were allowed to consume less. So the poorest person had to live in a palatial mansion, while the richest were able to live in a two or three bedroom house. I am not saying that is what will happen, but it did make for an interesting read (and allowed the author to set up some imaginary issues and solve them).