They aren’t anywhere near being able to edit and prepare such histories for publication for a general audience, it’s true.
But determining what sorts of leading questions to ask would be fairly easy to automate, since the Internet knows what interests people. And from what I’m seeing the crippled and elderly are very ready to talk to Google, Alexa, Siri &etc., and the companies backing those technologies are pouring money into them. I don’t think a human can match the persistence and unflagging attention Alexa offers.
Uh - yes, probably eventually. Hopefully you won’t still be alive, but yeah. Even the creative fields will probably end up able to be done mostly by computer. I mean, I am fairly confident right now one could come up with a plot equal to one of the Transformers movies.
But but by then we should be in some Star Trek like utopia, until the machines rise up like either the Matrix or The Terminator.
ETA - also I edited my post to make it make fucking sense. No I didn’t suffer a stroke, I just didnt reread my half distracted post again till today.
Well golly gee whiz, Rip, you’ve solved the problem! Everyone of any age who’s automated out of his job across a wide swath of careers (auto mechanics, sure, and also truck drivers, paralegals, factory workers, accountants, ditch diggers, etc, etc, etc, etc …) can just get retrained in the very intuitive and easy-to-learn jobs of robot design, construction and repair (at least when those jobs aren’t held by robots themselves). You’re a genius!
I don’t agree. I don’t think a robot is going to be able to take note of an interesting opening in the interviewing process and go there. It’s not about interest of the internet, it’s about historical preservation of our heritage.
You do realize that the transitions were not smooth or without incident, yeah? It was a violent, bloody, often humiliating struggle to an industrialized economy. The point is not to say we shouldn’t change our economy, but that we should change our economy without wrecking people’s lives.
I’m serious here. What is the point of doing anything, if only a few people will have the ability to make a living and the rest of us are screwed? Because that is the sort of option being offered here.
Just because it’s possible that only a few people will have the ability to ‘make a living’, i.e. work, that doesn’t mean that everyone else will be screwed. Automation has the potential to dramatically reduce the prices of everything, meaning it might be far easier to provide a universal income for example.
Well, I think when it gets to that point, our whole way of doing things is going to have to be different. Because if no one has a job, no one can afford to buy the goods produced. Which means there is going to have to be some new system that what we have. I really don’t know what that future will look like. PART of that future will be in my life time, i.e. automated vehicles moving things around, automated cashiers taking and processing orders, automated machines pumping out Big Macs. The more advanced stuff that replaces the more highly skilled workers may or may not be in my life time.
That CGP Grey video I linked to has a few possible ideas, like basically a universal income. I am sure people will still make and do things, bespoke stuff (I hate that word, btw) just because they want to and can.
But this is going to be like the horse. 100 years ago the horse was an irreplaceable part of our society and culture. Down town NYC was clogged with horse drawn carts, dead horses, and horse poo. Now they more or less all live pampered lifestyles schlepping people like my kid around once a week for fun, very few of them actually “working” animals. But we do still have horses.
Unless we have major, serious changes to our economy, that is where it is headed. Automation has already put thousands of people out of work, and they are not living in the lap of luxury, they are struggling with unemployment or eeking out a living doing low-paid retail work.
You’re right that automation doesn’t have to mean that we’re screwed. But if we continue as we are, right now, then it actually does mean that, because it has meant that. Given the state of the economy and politics right now, do you honestly think that in most places a universal income is the option that everyone in power is going to go for? I think in European countries, that’s going to be far easier to get into place, but much like America isn’t the world, neither is Europe.
This is my point. How close do you think we are to a new system right now, as it stands? Most corporations refuse to pay even a pittance of their profits in taxes. They literally with pull up stakes and move if they can, in order to find cheaper labor and less taxes. [quote=“Mister44, post:52, topic:101902”]
But this is going to be like the horse.
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I noted elsewhere, that the economic impact of this shift is often entirely ignored in some of the rosier pictures some are trying to paint of automation. That people were impacted negatively by the shift to internal combustion engines. These changes were often violent and wrenching, and the same thing will happen again if we’re not careful.
That’s the sort of option already being offered by the wider programme of the neoliberal global consensus. What I don’t understand is why much of the ownership class doesn’t grasp that letting inequality trends continue without intervention ultimately hurts them*, too. “I love spending my hard-earned money on bodyguards” is something no sane wealthy person said, ever.
I do – those in power on the economic left and right in the U.S. are already discussing this formerly unthinkable concept because they’ve painted themselves into a corner. And because conservatives will have to buy in for it to work, this is what I envision it will look like.
Yes. I think it’s quite likely. It’s already something that’s being widely talked about on the right. The reason it hasn’t happened yet is because we’ve only dipped our toes in the waters when it comes to automation, prices have been incrementally trending downwards, what I’m talking about would be an exponential change (because if it wasn’t like that then likely it would be because ‘full’ automation hadn’t happened, so we wouldn’t have the problem to solve in the first place). If that were the case it wouldn’t really matter what the political situation is, it would be so cheap to sort it out there’d be no reason not to do so.
There’s no guarantee that’s going to happen of course, but there’s good reason to be believe it might, and it’s not going to solve all of our problems, there’s still land ownership, farming, energy, and the environment to think about (though a lot of the problems there could be solved/mitigated via AI/Automation as well).
Actually, I bet there is a subset who like it, because it makes them feel even more important and special![quote=“gracchus, post:56, topic:101902”]
And because conservatives will have to buy in for it to work, this is what I envision it will look like.
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I think that’s all right on the money.
But I do think that the hard work of having a smooth transition can’t be done in the current climate. As long as the global neoliberal consensus is holding together, we’re going to get nothing but half measures to try and appease the rest of us.
And what does it look like when it happens? Do you honestly think we’re just going to get a Star Trek, replicator happy ending, where we all get to spend our time enriching ourselves, because we wished for it. Not everyone is on board with a UBI, and as @gracchus noted in his link, it could very well be not nearly as helpful as we’d like.
I do think you’re putting way too much faith in how our system works. I mean, you did see Brexit and the election of Trump, right? And many other right wingers around the world?
My entire point has been that, yes, automation could be a good thing, but looking back, so far it’s been more disruptive than positive, for much of humanity. I think if we want it to be a positive for all of us, we need to dig in and make it so. The question, for me, at least, is whether we have the political will to do so. It’s not a simple or easy transition, because a changing economy in the capitalist system never is. We’ve already seen real world damage wrought by these changes. Given the utter indifference the political class has shown to the rest of us (by and large, there are exceptions, of course) at this point, I’m not at all sure that it’s not going to be yet another violent, wrenching set of changes in store for our future…
What is Gramsci call it? The interregnum, the transition period between one ruler and the next? He argued it was a period of uncertainty, and this seems as good a term as any to define our current period. We can’t predict the future, we can only hope to guide it.
Not plausible in a western democratic context at least, because they run counter to all of our current laws, rights, and ideals. Might be more likely to see something like that in China or Russia.
