Rice Professor Predicts Humans Out of Work In 30 Years 808
kkleiner writes "Rice University professor Moshe Vardi has been evaluating technological progress in computer science and artificial intelligence and has recently concluded that robots will replace most, if not all, human labor by 2045, putting millions out of work. The issue is whether AI enables humans to do more or less. But perhaps the real question about technological unemployment of labor isn't 'How will people do nothing?' but 'What kind of work will they do instead?'"
This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait to actually live! come on automation! we're ready for this!
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, will be serving my robotic overlords.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure most people are ready for their boss to be replaced by a robot. And not some genius robot, just a competent one would do.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Boss, hell - I'd settle for a Linux fembot with a penchant for evil.
Shit.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
I would say the FSF could make one, but I don't want it to have a beard.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, fembots. I suppose the Apple model will be prettier, but much more expensive?
The real problem is that it will demand ecosystem monogamy.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
You are forgetting the internal moisture sensors that void the warrantee.
Re: (Score:3)
But it will have nice, rounded curves .... er, corners.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Interesting)
There will be resistance to this at first, but then home 3d printers will improve to the point that you can print many of the things you want or need easily. Things that need to be assembled from printed and commodity parts will be assembled locally, while still being very low price. Like, cheaper than shit from China.
Eudaimonia.
Re: (Score:3)
And where is all this wealth going to come from?
Star Trek isn't real, nor is this supposed Utopia so many seem to think will happen.
There'll be a lot more death and suffering before any of that has a chance to come true,
Re: (Score:3)
Star Trek isn't real? So what? Twenty years ago pocket communicators weren't real. Today they are common to the point of being free. We just call them cell phones. You saying that economics doesn't work? Reality isn't real? Technology can't advance?
Seems to me you are just being fatalistic. Understandable, since
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Insightful)
"You could have said the same thing about mass production, and predicted that the world would still be full of serfs and slaves 200 years in the future, but you would have been wrong."
But the problem is that until now technology has generally acted as a productivity multiplier for the general population. What will happen at some point is probably that humans are in fact not needed any more. And we will therefore only be able to earn money by capital investment (in non-human based production). And that will have a tremendous effect on the distribution of wealth in the World and will probably lead to revolutions and worse.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is nothing but a rehash of Luddism. Industrialization destroyed vast swaths of unskilled labor, but it also allowed increased specialization that lead to an explosion in the number of people not directly involved in farming.
Increased production has never once in history lead to a war. Never.
Re: (Score:3)
Just because the robots took the productive jobs doesn't mean people won't have jobs. There will still be actors, writers, artisans, chefs, athletes, etc. There will be plenty of jobs. They just won't produce so many critical things.
Your argument is nothing but a rehash of Luddism. Industrialization destroyed vast swaths of unskilled labor, but it also allowed increased specialization that lead to an explosion in the number of people not directly involved in farming.
Increased production has never once in history lead to a war. Never.
As much as I like your image of the future (I'm a huge Culture fan), I have to ask...how many actors, writers, artisans, chefs, athletes, etc do you think the world can support while still using money?
On top of that, how much do you think these people will be making when the labor market is flooded with supply for whatever jobs can't be done by robots or AI?
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Calling hard working people slaves just shows ignorance on your part. Those people are working to develop their industrial base, something that will improve the lives of their children. But you don't want to hear about that, because you want to return to the world as it was prior to industrialism. You know, where 99% of people were serfs or slaves, rather than 0.001%.
That is, unless you have some EVIDENCE that people are being held in bondage and forced to work on a massive scale somewhere. But you don't, because you act solely based on your feelings, which are more important to you than reality. It's disgusting.
Re: (Score:3)
>That is called Labour theory of value, a 19th century theory of value that has been long since disproven.
This is often said, and never true. Firstly you got the date wrong - the labour theory of value was written by philosopher John Locke in the 16th century.
Secondly claims that it is "disproven" are never substantiated, in fact it isn't. The labour theory of value (which in it's proper form states 'all value is created through human labour') is the basis of BOTH capitalism AND communism (they don't arg
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Locke lived until 1632, Adam Smith was born in 1723.
If you believe in a linear concept of causality then it seems rather unlikely that Locke could have copied from somebody who wasn't even born until almost a century after he died.
That's like claiming Plato's work was based on Carl Jung's !
Mill was born in 1773 - long after Smith even.
The first and original labour theory of value was written by Locke. Locke's theory forms the basis of western property law, and it formed the basis in turn of much later economic theory. Smith wrote most of the basis of modern capitalism based on it (but capitalism existed well before Smith - hell the first corporation existed before Locke was even born), Marx's theory was based on it as well.
I never said all these things ARE Locke's theory, I said they are all BASED on it. All mere refinements of an idea that dates back to the 1600's.
There are many problems with Locke's theory - for example apart from the word "man" there is nothing in there that doesn't mean a beaver should be able to claim full ownership of it's dam, especially as it can probably show it's family lived on the land for centuries before the current owner arrived.
It is quite capable of supporting the contradictory conclusions drawn by Adam Smith and Karl Marx too.
But please dude, if you can't manage to not get your centuries confused you shouldn't be arguing history.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ideally, this professor needs to get to building these robots asap.
And then robots that maintain those robots...
and then...
robots that maintain those robot's robots.
Hopefully the 3rd generator of robots will exhibit more logic than the professor at which point skynet will be born.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Interesting)
I made a nice post about it a few weeks back... the idea that the ultimate goal of computer science to to reach the so-called singularity at which point we have an AI capable of writing software and similar human tasks, thus putting the computer scientists and programmers out of work (at least all the ones who aren't at an intellectual capacity to move to some novel field of computation).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Programmers don't just translate flow charts into code. Writing code is a deeply complex and creative task on a par with writing English prose. We're no more likely to replace programmers, in my opinion, than we are to replace Shakespeare. Very creative jobs like those will be the very last to fall to AI.
Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot. (Score:4, Interesting)
But who makes those bits? Developers.
What happens when some highly intelligent business user goes and puts the hotplate underneath the shower? Well... you have to protect against that.
At the end of the day, we are no longer developing software, but developing software that develops software. The reason business wants to bring this in, is speed to market. They don't want to have to run a new SDLC to correct a spelling mistake, move an image to the left a few pixels, or to create yet another new form that takes 6 months to analyse, develop, QA and release.
It's actually more work at the end of the day for developers, less rubbish work for both developers and the business, and a higher level of value.
Re: (Score:3)
All this does is redefine programmer. Originally, you had to code your own machine code, but very soon you had assemblers, so you could just use mnemonics. Then you had compilers, which wrote the assembly code for you: all you had to do was write C code. Thus, we already have programs that write programs. Still, we have to describe what program it is that we want. And that is still considered programming. If in the future we do this using a flow chart, then that simply means we use a visual programming lang
Re: (Score:3)
Flowcharts were popular in the 80s and fell out of favour as a way of describing tasks. As a task gets complex, the flowchart becomes unwieldy very quickly. Far easier to use a high-level language like Python.)
Actually, the peak decade for flowcharts was probably the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, Object-Oriented programming had pretty much rendered them obsolete, although they had been waning in popularity ever since Structured Programming became the norm in the 1970s, as flowcharts actually are most essential when you have spaghetti code. When code is more modular and/or more organized, other tools, such as Nassi-Scheiderman diagrams are more useful for covering all the potential decision paths.
The 1970s was the deca
Re: (Score:3)
I tend to agree with Freeman Dyson
"My own opinion is that AI has failed to fulfill its promise because we are using the wrong kind of computers. We are using digital computers, and the human brain is probably analog rather than digital. So my guess is that AI will succeed only after we move from digital to analog computing."
Freeman Dyson knew a lot about a lot of things, but AI isn't one of those things.
Re: (Score:3)
You're neglecting something. If the last of the current jobs are eliminated in 2045, which jobs will still be available in 2040, and how do you motivate people to prepare for them? Now try that same projection for 2035, 2030, 2025 and 2020.
Note that you will be WRONG about which jobs remain in at least SOME of your predictions. So are you going to compensate those people who guessed wrong about which jobs will be left?
It's not an easy problem, but AFAICT, the only way to even make a start at it is to hav
What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
This was predicted back in the 1930s, too. How did that work out for them?
Exactly!
People became more productive due to technology. Now you are able to produce enough for you and your family in 40 hours / week. Before this technology advancement, you needed to work 60-80 hours / week in order to produce enough.
What will happen if we are super productive as that professor claims? Have you seen the Jetsons? that is pretty much what will happen: you would work 2 days a week for 5 hours / day. Your job would not be canning tuna, but making sure that the machine that does it gets maintenance. We would spend our time, doing art, music, entertainment, or any other leisure related activity/job.
Consider this: we don't have to work to get air. All that it means, is that we can use the labor to produce something else. If we had to work to get air, we would simply switch some of the labor from their current occupation to air production, but we would not get the benefit from what they are currently doing.
Jobs are not a scarce resource, labor is. There is always enough jobs for everyone that wants one and then some, even if it means being self employed. The only reason there is unemployment at all, is because of bad laws.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
I predict we'll get in a lot more trouble, but I for one like to believe I will get some time to do all the fun projects I have to put off now. Maybe things that now seem impractical or prohibitively expensive will get done. The egyptians showed us a large amount of cheap labor can produce wonders that still boggle the mind, what about large amounts of educate, dedicated labor?
Re: (Score:3)
Go read Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers and Beggars Ride trilogy. Much better than Judge Dredd wrt disparities in human productivity and capability.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd look at the last 30-40 years for an example of what will happen: Less jobs, stagnant pay, more ludicrous wealth for a select few.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what you take from the last 30-40 years? We're much better off now than the mid-70s, when we had all those things plus gas lines!
We're at the end of a long economic downturn, as happened in the 70s, and in the 30s, and so on. It's merely cyclic - like complaining in August "if this trend continues, the seas will boil!"
Almost everyone used to farm - now very very few do that work, thanks to automation (and food is amazingly cheap by historical standards), and most people now have non-farm jobs. A great many people used to do manufacturing work - now very few do that, thanks to automation (and soon enough it will be none), and most people will have non-manufacturing jobs.
We're just working our way up the hierarchy of needs. Once food was easy, everyone wanted a car, a washing machine, and a TV. Now cars, washing machines, and TVs are easy, and everyone wants entertainment and social interaction (and, yes, a few entertainers are ludicrously wealthy), as well as personal services and consulting.
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Informative)
Were you alive and working in the '70s? In many ways things were better. There was enough work and even a minimum wage job could support me better then now when I make 2.5X minimum wage. Some of the toys now might be better and the big thing is that debt is available which is why the average person is in debt to their eyeballs.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you mean by "trivial work"?
I have a fried who was born into wealth. While his income isn't much higher than mine, he's always dressed fashionably - because he has a fashion consultant - his apartment is beautiful - because he uses a decorating service - and he never spends time shopping for mundane stuff - because he uses a personal shopper. I realized recently that I could now afford all of those services, and they would make my life better, but they're still a bit pricey for the value they'd bring me.
Technology revolutions bring stuff that used to be only for the rich into the realm of the common man. If those personal services were a bit cheaper, or all the other stuff in my life was cheaper, I'd use all of them. I think that's where we're going: an explosion of such jobs. Home theater consultant/installer has become a new field. Having groceries delivered is no longer just for the rich. The trend is established, really, just flatlined through the recent downturn.
Eventually it wouldn't surprise me if most everyone had such a job: a specialist in whatever aspect of life they most enjoyed making better, providing the consulting/legwork service of making it better for others. Heck, even if home 3D printing reached Star Trek replicator status, there would still be specialists in helping others decide what to make to be in fashion this season, or help suggest just the right program for the sexbot, or whatever.
It's work that most people would like doing, that is done better face-to-face, and that would provide a lot of social interaction and reasons to chat about what you like best right now.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The group that saw the greatest amount of growth was government. They went from ~20% of GDP to greater than 40. That is why your pay is stagnating, and why there are so few jobs. Governments don't create goods that you can buy. They aren't PRODUCTIVE. Cut the government back down to 20% of GDP, and the purchasing power that was previously being distributed to people who didn't produce anything will largely find its way back to productive pursuits, and we will start to grow again.
That statistic is misleading as included in the government workforce are police, fire, teachers and numerous other groups that prior to 1960 where not classified as government workers.
But even taking those into account, the number of government workers have increased, but measuring against GDP is meaningless. But the real measure, the number of government workers compared to the total population is smaller today (after adjusting for professions that were not previously included) than it was in 1960. It would make sense that as the number of citizens increases, the number of workers to protect (police and fire), educate (teachers), heal (public health), construct (more people mean more roads and bridges) and even adminster (more people mean more clerks at the DMV are needed).
The number of workers the government has is not a problem anymore than the number of workers Microsoft has. It all depends what those workers are doing.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are you getting your numbers? Among the white-collar class at least 40+ hours was fairly standard, and allowed a man to support his family comfortably. It's these days where 60+ hours is not uncommon, and typically both parents are working, so we're talking 100+ hours a week to support a family. Real wages have been falling for a long time. Yes all that technology has been making us more productive, but we're not earning correspondingly more, all the extra profit is accumulating to those few at the top of the heap, and they're not likely to start spreading the wealth around just because you ask nicely.
You offer a nice view of how extensive automation *could* play out, but so far I see little evidence that it *will* play out that way. The way things are going it seems more likely that most people will simply become obsolete and be fighting for a place in the welfare line. Because quite frankly most people aren't cut out for high-tech maintenance jobs, and if robots can do all menial and service jobs faster and cheaper than a human, what exactly are Joe and Jane Sixpack supposed to do to earn a living?
As for the reason this issue was brought up in the 30's, is that it was in fact imminent then. In the US at least it has in fact been *decades* since there's been any technological need for anyone to work more than a couple days a week to provide everyone with a comfortable lifestyle, the problem is that our economic model has yet to adapt to the new reality, if anything it's been going in the opposite direction. Current claims simply hilight the fact that things are likely to soon reach an critical level where they can't be ignored. Heck, factory robots are already becoming cheaper than Chinese laborers, and are beginning to take over service jobs as well.
robots are capital, labor is expenses (Score:4, Insightful)
The benefits accrue to those who have the capital. So increased automation has resulted in increased concentration of wealth (a fairly common cyclical behavior.. see gilded age, for example), because the value of the increased productivity over the last 30-40 years have paid the investor, not the laborer.
It's all about "who owns the means of production", because that's who gets the benefits of the production. When you are a tenant farmer, the landowner makes the money. When you own the land, your asset becomes more valuable.
When you are providing labor for a wage, you ARE in economic terms, no different than the machine that replaces you.
So.. "to the barricades"
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
People became more productive due to technology. Now you are able to produce enough for you and your family in 40 hours / week. Before this technology advancement, you needed to work 60-80 hours / week in order to produce enough.
That's what you'd think isn't it?
The reality is somewhat different:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-chart-productivity-hourly-compensation.gif [turner.com]
I'll leave it to the educated reader to deduce what happened to *40 years worth of difference between productivity and wages.
*It's not labeled, but the lines diverge in 1973
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Insightful)
The educated reader would realize that productivity increases aren't distributed equally across the workforce.
Once upon a time, they were
http://exopermaculture.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/526916_10150870575016275_36774245_n.jpg [wordpress.com]
Then things changed (the bottom half of this graphic)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/13/opinion/13greenhousech/13greenhousech-popup-v4.png [nytimes.com]
"likely able to" is just conjecture. Try again with facts.
The numbers are out there, see if they support your hypothesis.
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Labour at zero cost is a scarce resource, that doesn't preclude jobs above subsistence cost being scarce too ...
Why would the bosses hand out Jetson's job to lots of different people working 5 hours for 2 days out of the week ... much more efficient to have someone there longer, less shift hand overs means less room for mistakes. Unless the law demands it, the jobs won't be spread out across the entire population.
Labour can't pull itself up by the bootstraps either, since natural resources ARE scarce ... there is no more land to homestead.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
And who's gonna be paying you to spend your time doing art, music entertainment, or any other leisure activity?
That seems to be the mistake all the pie-in-the-sky thinkers make; they just assume that, with the elimination of work for humans, the elimination of a weighted financial system designed to separate us into differing economic classes will disappear with a magical POOF.
The more likely circumstance is that, as more and more people lose their jobs to robotic workers, endless riots and resource wars will become the new norm.
At least, until a significant portion of the population is killed off.
Re: (Score:3)
they just assume that, with the elimination of work for humans, the elimination of a weighted financial system designed to separate us into differing economic classes will disappear with a magical POOF.
...
Two sentences fought for the right to come out first... and apparently they both won.
Re:Could stupidity be artificial? (Score:5, Funny)
Too late; it's already been invented. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
The transition is likely to SUCK HARD. Before we make this transition there will be riots, wars, and probably a lot of deaths among the haves and have nots. I just don't see this as being a nice and peaceful transition. I think it is inevitable that we are going to hit this change point fairly soon and I suspect that we will survive it as a species.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He isn't entirely incorrect. But not for the libertarian reasons he thinks.
Good laws would force equitable pay for equitable work and reduce the mandatory work hours dramatically.
Re: (Score:3)
I remember it in the 1960s. Robots (or machines) have certainly replaced some jobs, or changed them - we no longer have the office typing pool for instance. However for some jobs it is going to be hard to replace humans: hospital nurses, kindergarten teachers for instance.
Re: (Score:3)
If it's getting cheaper for companies to run robot factories in the US than to employ Chinese labourers, I get the feeling the idea is a lot closer to reality than in the 1930s. I find the idea that robots wil be able to replicate imagination or creativity utterly laughable though, in any field.
Re: (Score:3)
> If it's getting cheaper for companies to run robot factories in the US than to employ Chinese labourers
It's even getting cheaper to use robots in china than to employ chinese laborers. [theverge.com]
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Informative)
in the US, in 1900 41% of the labour was involved in agriculture, in 1930 it was 21.5%. Today it's between 2 and 3%. Europe is something similar.
And that's to say nothing of the 10's of millions of farm animals that worked in the same period and were replaced as well.
To an extent you're right though, people are still needed to oversee the robots, to replace and repair robots etc. The modern car factory even though it may have thousands of workers is very different than a car factory of thousands of workers before. That doesn't mean an end to work, it just means an end to a lot more manual work.
With opens then next possible revolution in industry. Customization. Rather than 10 different models of cars you can have 10 000 all for the same price and only a tiny marginal cost in deciding which one is best for you. That certainly happens now with cars, the marginal cost is just too high for a lot of it. But that will apply to a lot more goods likely, a lot more 'service' jobs that are are about deciding what you want the robots to do, and telling them how to do it, and fixing them when they fail.
Re: (Score:3)
And I'm sure my grandparents found them very delicious.
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, yeah, about that. [wikipedia.org] It pretty much happened. [wikipedia.org] Technology and machines took over the farm job and everyone moved to the cities. More so than they did in the past. You know, what with the improvements from crop rotation leading to people moving to cities and helping with the Renaissance.
So... it's not that there are no farmers any more, just SIGNIFICANTLY LESS. And that's really what sociologists, historians, and people that make policy care about. Nothing ever works in absolutes in these fields, but they care what 80% of the masses do.
Then in the 1960, the smart people at the time predicted that computers would take over the work and no-one would have to work. And lo and behold, the vast swath of meaningless paper pushers are gone, replaced with email, databases, and computers. And manufacturing took a massive hit. The plants are still there, but they don't employ nearly as many people.
The "if not all" clause is complete bullshit and the professor should be ashamed for making it, but it's not unreasonable that the trend of technology automating away jobs will continue. Duh. And if you had been paying attention in history class this would have been obvious.
Re:What? Again? (Score:4, Insightful)
And lo and behold, the vast swath of meaningless paper pushers are gone, replaced with email, databases, and computers.
You clearly haven't dealt with the U.S. healthcare system recently.
Yep (Score:3)
Point is: So the time frame was a bit off. It's still happening. The US is undergoing a manufacturing boom. Google it. There's tonnes of articles asking the question: where are all the manufacturing jobs. We all know the answer, but we're not allowed to say it. Because it inevitably leads to Socialism. To wealth redistribution. That's the white elephant we're all dancing around. The
Re: (Score:3)
"Reproductive rights" is code for abortion and contraception--that is, for *not* reproducing--and so the UN is being entirely consistent in pointing out unsustainable population increases and favoring reproductive rights.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Informative)
Feel free to stop eating anytime.
The thing is, we can feed the "useless eaters". Most industrial countries struggle with agricultural overproduction, not famine. What actually ends up killing lots of people - and what ultimately causes famine in developing countries nowadays, too - are the socipaths. The kind of people talk about "useless eaters". You - the Hitlers, Stalins and Maos - of this world are the real threat, not the "welfare queens" who are perfectly happy if you give them food and a tv.
Learn to ignore monsters like you, so we can start actually solving our problems rather than blaming them on jews, the bourgeois, the educated, the welfare queens, or whatever.
Re:What? Again? (Score:5, Informative)
What the fuck is the problem with people like you? How can the world possibly support 7.1 billion people who need air conditioning, iPhones, and the right to reproduce as irresponsibly as possible?
Have you looked at what happens when people get air conditioning, iPhones and the right to reproduce? Generally, they stop reproducing so much. Once people no longer depend on subsistence farming, and modern medicine makes the infant mortality rate drop, people stop having so many kids. Most developed economies are struggling to maintain replacement-rate reproductive growth.
Re: (Score:3)
So your point is that the population that needs to be controlled are in undeveloped economies
My point is that the population that needs to be controlled are populations that are growing, not the ones that are shrinking.
I.E. brown people
Because only brown people live in undeveloped countries. Your grasp of geography is almost as sound as your grasp on rational argument.
Fuck you. Fuck your racist prick ideology and you have been reported to the website administrators.
Oh no, are you going to tell my parents too? Maaaa, DNS-and-BIND is a dobber!
No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?
1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).
2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.
Rather than work, people's time will be spent trying to figure out which robot companies perform well. You can use a computer program to do it .. which will let you decide if you want to be a risky investor etc. If you want to design robots for extra income, you can do that too.
I didn't say products should be free. People will have to pay for the manufactured goods. Think of it this way -- it's the same as working. Instead of you physically going to work and getting a paycheck. Your robot does it for you.
People who make bad investment choices will be worse off than those who make wiser choices. Hopefully nobody will starve, because government will have enough tax revenue for a welfare scheme that provides the bare essentials.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, instead of paying $200,000 for a college education, you can get the education 100% free online (udacity, khan academy etc) and instead buy shares in a robot-using company. People will be able to pursue things they are interested in, they will just have a much greater safety net and more freedom to try out ideas.
Of course this is the utopian vision, but at least you must concede that the reality will not be a dystopia either.
Re: (Score:2)
but at least you must concede that the reality will not be a dystopia either
And what, over the past 20 years, has provided evidence for that? It looks to me like we're headed for a Gibsonian dystopia.
Re: (Score:3)
also need a single payer health care system (Score:3)
also need a single payer health care system
Re:No problem (Score:4, Insightful)
1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).
People can own shares in Google, too. It doesn't mean people just have shares in Google, they still need to earn money to buy them.
2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.
Ah, I see, you expect people of the world to endorse socialism. I'm not sure what sorcery you intend to use to force this, or how you think we can successfully transition to such a system, but I'm interested to hear it. Keep in mind, human nature has always been the big problem with things like socialism; in general, people don't want to be equal, they want more, and they certainly don't want to hand what they've earned to their neighbor who didn't earn it.
Re: (Score:3)
Well no, I don't expect people to endorse socialism. Socialism is when government owns the factories and controls the industry. Instead, I am are talking about taxation and welfare. Not socialism. It's better than fascism (forcing people to hire humans instead of purchase robots) suggested by the people who are anti robots.
Re:No problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?
Uh... because robots don't buy stuff?
Re:No problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?
Uh... because robots don't buy stuff?
Erm. The printer at work already orders it's own toner.
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
'What kind of work will they do instead?'
Well, that's a tricky one: If the worker-robots advance faster than the killer robots, it seems likely that the unemployed humans will find exciting new opportunities in either the 'rioting jobless masses' sector or the 'rentacops keeping the rioting jobless masses in their place' sector.
If the killer robots advance as fast or faster than the worker-robots, I predict a surge of new applicants in the organic fertilizer sector.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know if this is insightful or funny. Actually, I was afraid to choose.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't ask me. It was the Labor Statistics expert system that added 'organic fertilizer' as a job category. Apparently it's a growth industry, because the number of people who were previously unemployed; but applied for 'kinetic retraining' and found jobs there in the last quarter alone has been tremendous. The numbers don't lie!
Somewhat self-correcting (Score:3)
One fork in the eye of the Uber Rich is that the process is somewhat self-correcting. Nobody will have money to buy their stuff if nobody has jobs, or there are some jobs but they pay squat.
Robo-communism (Score:2, Interesting)
Each robot works according to its capacity, and the people receive according to their needs. This should be an improvement, since we don't need to work. Technology is suppose to decrease the amount you need to work by increasing efficiency.
We really need to progress toward an economic system where thats what happens, instead of what we are heading for: a concentration of wealth in a smaller and smaller number of individuals (he who owns the most robots, can build the most robot factories etc). The simple fa
We'll be left making only one thing ourselves... (Score:2)
Cut full time to 25-30 hours a week and haved forc (Score:2)
Cut full time to 25-30 hours a week and have forced overtime pay (no more of this salary BS) and (no comp time only) or maybe have a high level of pay where any on makeing over that on salary does not get overtime maybe starting it 100K+ adjusted for inflation.
what will people get paid for? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not how will people "do nothing", the question is how will people get paid for "doing nothing".
There will be a small percentage of people who do actual physical work. There will be a small percentage of people who do mental work. Those people will be paid well.
What about the rest? McDonalds/Starbucks will be fully robotic.
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard that before. These new fangled PC's in everyone's home will make datacenters a thing of the past! Cloud computing will make home computers a thing of the past! New 4GL languages will make developers a thing of the past! New spreadsheets will make business software developers a thing of the past! New point-and-click GUI's will make web developers a thing of the past!
So far, things just seem to be getting more and more complicated, requiring more and more people to run them.
"Things getting more and more complicated" (Score:3)
Has someone invented Omnius? (Score:2)
No worries (Score:2)
He's right and wrong...here's why (Score:5, Insightful)
He is wrong when it comes to us being out of work, the biggest (and hardest challenge of all times) will be in entertainment. The lazier we become, the more entertainment we need, online series, drawings, animations, films, stories, interactive experiences etc. will be the biggest thing on earth.
We will NEVER be out of work. We'll just work DIFFERENTLY than what we do now.
Time to Retrain People to Ignore the "Work Ethic" (Score:5, Insightful)
An economy so structured, with so little work for humans to do, will be a disaster if humanity continues insisting that there's an intrinsic morality in the "work ethic". For centuries we've tried to convince people that if they didn't work harder, they weren't morally entitled to a share of the aggregate sum of all that was produced through human labor. With almost nothing left that requires human labor, we'll be in bad shape if we don't replace the work ethic with entitlement ethic. (That will no doubt ruffle some conservative sensibilities). Want to see how the economy will have to work? Think "Star Trek Replicators"; that's why the Federation doesn't use money anymore in the 24th century.
How to live in a post scarcity world? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now, people have jobs; they perform work in exchange for goods, services, and more often some type of currency.
In turn, currency derives it's value increasingly not from the rarity of a linked specie, but from perceived worth. It's not invalid to say that the value of money is determined by how much it's worth - in terms of goods or services - thus you have things like A big mac index [wikipedia.org].
Here's the interesting thought in all this; what happens when the value of work effectively becomes zero? What happens on the way, when 20, 50, 80 percent unemployment is reached but society suffers no scarcity of services or goods thanks to robotic workers? When the effective value of work and the linked value of money become near zero not through hyperinflation, but out of lack of need? What happens when one country achieves that before others, especially since they're the likely candidate for top world power?
Personally, I think that we'll come up with another arbitrarily determined valuation system to peg individual worth to, like reputation or creative accomplishments; the desire to compare and compete and to have a discrete scale to measure is too ingrained into us to disappear just because the index we used is meaningless. I think that a vacation lifestyle would get boring after a few months, much less a lifetime, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.
What do you folks think?
Re: (Score:3)
This isn't actually a new problem. Many tropical societies have been existing for millenia in environments where scarcity doesn't really exist, it's simply that the current dominant cultures pretty much all originated in areas where you had to work to survive rather than just wandering around eating whenever you got hungry and dodging the jaguars and numerous venemous snakes and bugs. Such societies tend to develop gift economies which do in fact operate something like you describe - reputation is the "cu
So He's Saying the Industrial Revolution is Over (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
Bored people with no sense of purpose? NOT GOOD. (Score:3)
Of course I don't believe any of this crap in the first place; robots are not going to replace the majority of human labor, not at least in the next 30 years.
Feeling about unemployment today (Score:3)
It's not nonsense. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a list of things humans can do. There's a list of things machines can do. The second list is growing steadily. The first list, not so much. As machines check off more of the items on the list of human capabilities, the need for human workers decreases. As new jobs appear, more of them will be done by machines.
The current "jobless recovery" demonstrates this. US production is back up. The stock market is back up. The number of people working is not back up. Hiring large numbers of people is so last-cen. Even Foxconn in Shenzhen is converting to robots.
We don't need "the singularity" for this. Just routine progress. Computers are so cheap now that they're cheaper than even low-wage people.
Here's a vision of the future. Watch this Kiva Robotics [youtube.com] system fill orders. Those robots already fill about 15% of on-line orders in the US (Gap, Staples, Office.com, Walgreens, drugstore.com, pets.com, etc). Amazon bought Kiva recently. Those big new warehouses Amazon is building for local distribution won't have many employees. They'll kill off even more of retail.
We may not like the society we get from this, but that's where capitalism is taking us.
Machines should work. People should think.
Wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question that actually needs to be asked is, will the people who own the robots let the rest of us have any food?
They will do things we haven't thought of yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Back the late 1800s, agricultural work required about 3/4 of the US's population. Now it's about 3%. If, back then, you'd asked "what would happen if 96% of the farming jobs vanished?", you'd probably have gotten predictions of doom similar to this one. But what actually happened was that those people (or their descendants, rather, since this change didn't happen overnight) got employed doing other things, most of which people in the late 1800s couldn't have anticipated. The same thing will happen here. Human intelligence, creativity, and flexibility are valuable, and valuable stuff tends not to sit idle. People figure out something to do with it. There are temporary displacements and adjustments, but overall, automation doesn't idle people, it frees them up to do new things.
Note that I'm not talking about a situation where the machines are actually creatively intelligent, in contrast with something like Deep Blue being programmed ahead of time to do a highly-specific task. If we get to that point, all bets are off, but then we're venturing into singularity territory at that point, anyway.
Look back to the age of serfs and slaves. (Score:5, Interesting)
So what did the aristocracy do in those days? Many were wasters and drunks, although they knew the bankruptcy and shortness of such a life. They gambled. They intrigued. They fought. They screwed around. They did lots of hunting. Some worked in areas of interest. Some were genuinely religious. Some were good managers and organized their large farms. Some used their wealth to pursue science or art. Or patronize it. But they occupied themselves and tried not to overdo it. (Except the French who quite lost their heads.)
One does not see a classless world evolving in the coming robot age.. We are great apes wired to have status. We will find a way to stratify ourselves. The self starters and the gifted will make music and art -- cannot help themselves. Driven to it. . And some will gain status from it as they always have. Scientists, too, will plod on, with much help from smart machines. Einstein said computers were not very interesting because they did not ask questions. I suspect that no matter how smart machines get they probably won't ask meaningful ones. So we will need scientists -- if only to ask questions. But we may have to see about that. A lot of people, of course, will be happy to consume. To watch sports... and porn... and reality TV (Now there is an oxymoron for the morons.) And reality porn.
So how will society look? The holders of capital will do as they do now. Organize the disposition of production and consumption and distribution. They will decide where to build shopping centers and robot factories. So, at the top, where they are now and have been,we will have the wealthy. They will do what they have always done. Their 'work' will not change. They will own the bots. The priestly class of yore will be replaced by the computerists and roboticists. The machine tenders. Not everyone can do this, but it will be a far more widely spread ability. It is already happening. Even flacks and ad men are supposed to code. Feh! These cyber guys guys will have real work, lots of status, money and awesome sex appeal. Nerds are clearly enjoying more status than ever. Ten years ago not many girls would look at a guy wearing a computer on his head (there were a few) except to laugh.. Now he's the bad ass with the Google Glass on the red carpet. Anyway, I digress. Then, next level down, come the artists and other creative types. Next level down from that? There will be lots and lots of makers. And people will just make plastic choking hazards to trade and or sell. There will be a lot more yoga instructors and massage artists. Craft beer will be more popular in the future. MUCH more popular.
I think back to Ancient Rome where there were lots of slaves to do the farming and the drudgery. Thousands upon thousands of citizens were on the dole. Bloody sports were really popular. Then, at the bottom, as always there will be a percentage of people simply content to consume the food, clothes, music, and entertainment the machines and other people make while contributing little. They will get some support from the state, which should do its level best to educate and elevate them as well as placate them. In other words things won't change much.
"Now. Bite my shiny metal ass."
Re: (Score:3)
Yea because the average lifestyle is exactly the same now as it was 100 years ago or even 1000 years ago. Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm, but I read your post as if you actually believe it.
Did I hear something?
???*Woosh*???
Re:Professor Moron! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea because the average lifestyle is exactly the same now as it was 100 years ago or even 1000 years ago. Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm, but I read your post as if you actually believe it.
Did I hear something?
???*Woosh*???
Hmm... Let's see.
5000 BC: Iraq, Samarra. About the only thing we know is they did pottery. Beyond this point, there aren't any reliable records.
4000 BC: Mesopotamia. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
3000 BC: Mesopotamia. The Sumerian hegemony. A few wealth people and a large number of worker-slaves.
2000 BC: Egypt. The height of the Old Kingdom. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
1000 BC: China, Zhou Dynasty. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
0 AD: Roman Empire. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
1000 AD: Europe. Middle of the Dark Ages. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
2000 AD: United States. A few wealthy people, and a large number of worker-slaves.
Have I made my point yet?
Re:Professor Moron! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course that "worker-slave" distinction you like to put in there as some overly pessimistic pronouncement is living so far above the few wealthy of the prior era that it is almost completely uncomparable.
Re: (Score:3)
You've missed the point, I don't know about made it. The parent asked about lifestyles; you replied with a list of class divisions throughout history, with the usual hyperbole crap about workers being slaves. Tell me, how do the lifestyles of the "worker-slaves" of the United States compare to the those of the "wealthy few" of Mesopotamia?
Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather be a "worker-slave" in contemporary America, where I can work a five-day week, own my own place, travel the world relatively cheaply,
Re: (Score:3)
...
1000 AD: Europe. Middle of the Dark Ages. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
2000 AD: United States. A few wealthy people, and a large number of worker-slaves.
Oh, those poor worker slaves in the US. Air conditioning, smartphones, Internet, cable TV, abundant and diverse food choices ... the inhumanity!
Re: (Score:3)
While I do not necessarily disagree with your premise you are making sweeping generalities about societies based on an incredibly limited number of actual slave societies within those time periods.
Would you prefer a breakout every 500 years, 100 years, 10 years? Yearly? I can point to every dominant society and show that there was a small "elite" class and a large "working class", at just about every sample point. Yes, there are some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of the time, that's how it plays out.
And the description "worker-slaves" wasn't meant to say they were a bona fide slave labor class, but to point out that they work hard for limited benefit to themselves, but a large benefit to
Re:Professor Moron! (Score:5, Insightful)
I may be giving the professor too much credit; but my impression was that he was predicting a situation where advances in automation made robots more cost-effective than humans for essentially any task... Not that that would necessarily lead to especially pleasant outcomes for the redundant humans.
People who think that the benefits of increased automation will magically accrue to everyone are... questionably balanced... but the notion that an increasing number of tasks will be sufficiently well automated that even literal slave labor can't beat machines on price seems much harder to dispute.
Re: (Score:3)
It's cheaper to enslave other people to achieve that "good life" than it is to build the technology to elevate us all.
Some have argued that slavery is a factor of energy production. When the net energy production of the whole world drops below a certain threshold, that's when people start enslaving each other. Supposedly when energy is abundant and cheap, slavery won't be an issue.
Re: (Score:3)