Will robots take your job?

boing
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I’m still gonna say that as human beings, we are hard wired to seek out narrative structures. It might be one of the few things that marks us from other species we share our planet with (since we know that many other critters talk, have culture, and use tools). The point is never the amount of information, but the kind of information. That’s up to the individual archivist or oral historian. when taking an oral history, time is a limiting factor, but your generally looking for specific things. A labor archivist is going to ask specific questions about work and how that shapes one life. A gender historian or archvist is going to ask questions related to that. And so on. Sure, a machine can get a lot more information, but it’s not going to be of the same specific quality, I’d say.

This is my whole point. [quote=“Medievalist, post:69, topic:101902”]
remember the age of cheap energy is already ending, and we’re about due for a global plague, too
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And I feel you’ve missed my point again, about how changes to the economy can be dangerous periods of upheaval and violence. You’d think that with a view of the past couple of hundred years, we’d be able to account for it and make plans to ease into the new economy. Yes, there are always factors we can’t account for, but there plenty that we can. Recognizing that automation causes unemployment or underemployment, and that it doesn’t have to do that, is one step in that direction.

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I’d suggest that many of the changes that happened in the era of capitalism very much seemed like a dystopia to a whole lot of people.

But they didn’t lead to dystopia, so maybe we shouldn’t take too much stock in historical ideological outrages, we should learn that from history as much as anything else.

But I take your point, it could well be messy, even if the final outcome is a lot better than what came before.

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There still will be historians and poets and artists and others who do things better or as good as machines. But we can’t build an economy on poets and historians (or could we…?).

So, yeah, the universal wage or something similar will go into effect. Or possibly it means jobs will move away from making things to doing things, exploring places, studying things.

Like in Star Trek, once you have replicator technology, one is never want for another thing. While automation isn’t exactly that, it is similar in the capitalism as we know relied on trading good and labor for other goods and labor. That is where the whole concept of money came from, an “IOU” or a representation of past labor to be exchanged. When robots replace the labor, what is the point of money?

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Let me just say that the past 200 or so years are full, FULL of dystopian periods for many, MANY people. We ignore that at our peril. Mike Davis once made a point about how the golden age of Victoria looked like a funeral pyre to much of the global south. Just because we’re here, standing the ashes of history, doesn’t mean that we can or should ignore how we got here and why. [quote=“caze, post:104, topic:101902”]
But I take your point, it could well be messy, even if the final outcome is a lot better than what came before.
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I’m glad and I appreciate it. I do think we can have a better world, even though I known I must come off as a pessimist here. I know we can do better, but it doesn’t just happen because we make some cool shit. It happens because we make policies, laws, and cultural understandings that make good stuff happen. I think we can have the new technologies that makes all our lives easier, and get there without massive upheavals, but we have to contiunally work at it and remember our collective humanity in the process.

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The problem of course is if in attempting to prevent temporary mini-dystopias we end up causing more permanent and long lasting ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Why not? Seriously, give me a good reason why we couldn’t do that, given that poets and historians are some of the few “jobs” that have been with us since the beginnings of civilization, if not before. People who make sense of the chaos that is human life have always been important, and if we start ignoring that, how can we move forward in a way that preserves our common interests?[quote=“Mister44, post:105, topic:101902”]
once you have replicator technology, one is never want for another thing
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I think with Star Trek, we only get a glossed over version of how we got that Roddenberrian utopia of the federation. I don’t think that a piece of technology can fix humanities problems by itself. The cotton gin sure as hell didn’t! It’s the perfect example of how technologies that change labor practices can have unintended (or perhaps intended consequences). Slavery became more fully entrenched in southern culture and the American economy because of the cotton gin. I can easily see a replicator type technology leading the opposite of star trek, where copyright is a corporate exclusive right, the ability to make things are relegated to a few, and we’re all dependent upon a class system that only allows a few the post-scarcity material abundance represented by replicators.

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So, it was okay to allow for, say, slavery, because the world is now better off? I’m not sure we can say that’s true, given that we’re still working through the global negative implications of that one? Or various forms of colonialism? Is the mindless destruction of one culture worth our modern comfort? What about the very real environmental degradation caused by cheap oil, various chemical industries, and chemical production?

I’m not saying these are easy questions or that I know the right answers here, BTW. I’m just suggesting that these are very gray moral areas that we have to actual face head on and truthfully, if we’re going to move forward in some sort of productive fashion. Personally, I find it very frustrating that people can just assume that technology will fix our problems, when I think it’s a combination of technology and a strong moral compass aimed at doing as little destruction to each other and the world as possible.

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The entertainment industry seems to be doing pretty well for itself.

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Maybe that’s what I should be doing… working in film and tv… I think I know one guy who is working for or running a production company.

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Obviously those things aren’t ok by our current moral standards, I’m not sure what use it is to say we shouldn’t have done certain things like that in the past, current arguments have no bearing on the decisions people made back then, we don’t have any time machines lying around. We can only judge our current and upcoming issues with the moral tools we have available to us today, and who knows what kinds of things our ancestors might recoil in horror at us doing today, things that your or I wouldn’t bat an eyelid to.

Personally, I find it very frustrating that people can just assume that technology will fix our problems, when I think it’s a combination of technology and a strong moral compass aimed at doing as little destruction to each other and the world as possible.

I’m not assuming technology will fix all of our problems. I was just discounting one particular set of outcomes as implausible, there are far more serious things to worry about with AI and automation than the notion of some moustache twirling capitalists creating a nightmare future of serf-like subjugation. What if the new systems develop intelligences significantly advanced from our own, and it turns out they don’t share a moral outlook that is compatible with our own, or don’t have any moral principles at all, just very simple utility maximisation functions? That’s a far more worrying scenario IMHO.

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Wait, this:

And this:

Are the same damn thing.

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114

Well because 1) We can only consume so much of either.

  1. When it comes to poets and artists, only a small percentage are going to be good enough to be able to make a living at it (like now).

  2. Even if everyone capable of doing such work does it, it would only be a small percentage over all. (CGP Grey touches on this in the linked video above.) I mean really, would I make a good poet? Though I do think people will do art for arts sake, and some companies will of course still make media for us to consume.

Yeah, but that was also a bad mixture of timing and the fact we had a giant industry that would boom from it that was based on slave labor. Had slavery been outlawed before it was invented, and it was just people paid to work on cotton farms, it would have helped everyone invovled. I agree that what did happen had a domino effect that made life worse for others and its repercussions are still being felt.

Totally agree. Some futurists I think don’t realize this.

I still don’t have all the answers. I mean, it could be like Star Trek where everyone has their basic needs met and everyone can basically do what they want, and the best and brightest are chosen to go to the stars. It could be like Elysium where the automation and magic machines for the chosen few make life a utopia, but for some reason they don’t share these things with anyone else, and they are left to toil away at life. It could be something like The Matrix or the new anime on Netflix Blame! (check it out, visually stunning!), where machines do more or less make everyone’s lives easier, before it all goes to shit for one reason or another.

I understand your pessimism, especially considering the world’s history. You’re right that “the past 200 or so years are full, FULL of dystopian periods”, but I’d argue there were even more in the past. And going back far enough everyone was a slave to survive and do what they had to do everyday just to eat.

Its our increase efficiency that is what has allowed us to progress. The free time of rich thinkers is what allowed the Renaissance to happen. For the arts to flourish and thrive (especially outside or religious based stuff.) Maybe if we free up even more people to do what ever, we will find out even more wonderful truths?

I am not trying to sound naive or to poo poo yours or anyone elses worry or concern, because no one knows what is around the corner and it could be bad. I am just trying to be more optimistic in general.

Yes, but you can’t employ everyone to make movies. Although, that sounds like something Douglas Adams would write. A world where everyone makes movies, but no one actually has time nor desire to watch them.

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I’m saying we need to learn from them, and not make the same missteps. [quote=“caze, post:112, topic:101902”]
We can only judge our current and upcoming issues with the moral tools we have available to us today
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And presumable our current morality is informed by our common past, yeah? And lets not forget that I’m not talking about stuff in our ancient past, but in some cases, things that are within living memory (jim crow wasn’t all that long ago, as in living memory for many people). [quote=“caze, post:112, topic:101902”]
AI and automation than the notion of some moustache twirling capitalists creating a nightmare future of serf-like subjugation
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Do you honestly think that’s what I’m suggesting? Do you think that people who called in the pinkertons against unions in the 19th and 20th century were twirling their mustache type evil instead of just the normal ordinary utilitarian banality of evil evil? There aren’t any mustache twirling in the past, just human beings with a great deal of political and social power making choices that led directly to pain, suffering, and sometimes incredibly violent deaths of other human beings. People making choices that leads to the subjugation of others aren’t generally made in super fortresses of evil, but rather in the halls of power where some people are looking to protect themselves and their cohorts from other, less powerful people.

Honestly speaking, I think that @gracchus’ dystopian scenario is far more realistic than machinery and AI not being at least partially grounded in human morality. As long as AI programs are written by human beings, I think this is a far less worrying scenario than some human beings seizing power by taking control of some aspect of the economy in a way that disproportionately benefits them and their “group” however that is defined.

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No, the first is a paranoid delusion. The second is an unknown, given our lack of understanding of machine intelligence it’s impossible to rule out at this point, it could be the default setting for all we know.

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You really think there’s that big a difference between a machine that blindly follows a value optimization function even when it creates human misery, vs “shareholder value” ?

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Tell that to my ever growing cd/dvd/book collection!

We could acknowledge that such things are just social goods in and of themselves. We already do, with things like national poets and the like, yeah?

I think you’re basing your assumptions on what our current economy looks like, though. And

I don’t know, have you worked at it? Being an artist isn’t really about just having raw talent and magically being good at something. Like anything else in life, it takes hard work, dedication, and an ability to understand the nuances of the profession. I’m fairly confident that many people could undertake this work, if they decide to do so. I don’t think William Carlos Williams was born writing perfect little poems about plums.

And choices people made to make the economy what it was. [quote=“Mister44, post:114, topic:101902”]
I still don’t have all the answers.
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No worries, none of us do! :wink:

We could, if we make those choices and work for that. This is why I think science fiction matters, because it helps us to see possibilities that could exist, if we work for that future. As imperfect as Star Trek is, the core vision, that humanity can figure out a way to rise above and move forward together as a united people, is a possibility that we can have. [quote=“Mister44, post:114, topic:101902”]
but I’d argue there were even more in the past.
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Maybe. I don’t know. Stephen Pinker thinks so, but I think there are serious flaws in his arguments. [quote=“Mister44, post:114, topic:101902”]
Maybe if we free up even more people to do what ever, we will find out even more wonderful truths?
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I’d like to think so.

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We do, and have. Nobody is currently planning on restarting the slave trade (aside from ISIS maybe), or starting a new round of invading other countries and ruling over them and pilfering all their resources.

Like I already agreed before, there’s room for some discomfort in the transition, I can imagine subsets of the economy, ruled by automation and AI, having negative unintended (or intended) consequences on people, there’s far less reason to believe that would be a realistic outcome in a fully automated economy though, for reasons I’ve already covered.

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Yes. For a start, shareholder value has been well demonstrated to improve the standard of living for most of us on the planet, even if you might be able to provide some individual examples where it doesn’t, the overall benefits are inarguable really. But more importantly, even in the worst case moustache-twirling scenario we’re not talking about an existential threat to the entire human race.

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I mean… not everybody has. [quote=“caze, post:119, topic:101902”]
restarting the slave trade (aside from ISIS maybe
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Except that even outside of Daesh controlled territory, the slave trade is alive and well, functioning across the world in numerous ways.

Have you missed the last 16 years? [quote=“caze, post:119, topic:101902”]
ruled by automation and AI, having negative unintended (or intended) consequences on people
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Sure, because it already has. Go talk to lots of Trump voters in the rust belt of America… or hell, in places like Manchester and Birmingham.

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When it comes to the be people were talking about, the people who are building the automated future, they have.

Again, not the same people, we’re talking there about outlier countries (like Mauritania), extremist religious groups, or criminal gangs involved in sex trafficking.

I wouldn’t describe anything that has happened in the last 16 years as examples of that, but I know others might view things differently.