This is not about humans vs machines, it is STILL, after all these centuries, about labor vs capital.
Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
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Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#12I agree with the premise that machines will increasing exceed our capabilities (and are improving quicker than we are). This seems so obvious as to be not debatable. I also think there are a lot of merits to online-education and Udacity seems to have the right general idea. On-line education needs to be more engaging and entertaining than simply videos and online collaboration. However, this whole "people need more s…
> We need to pivot our economic system towards a basic income model. So putting a floor on what people get each year seems like a pretty good idea. How about a ceiling as well? What's an equitable spread? 10x? 100x? Should the basic income given to residents of Manhattan be 2.5x what people in Wichita get?
>Should the basic income given to residents of Manhattan be 2.5x what people in Wichita get?
One of the main arguments of basic income, as opposed to unemployment benefits, is to reduce the bureaucracy involved. So the answer would be an empathetic 'no'. Hopefully, having a guaranteed income decoupled from location would push people to populate cheaper places. And thus, rent would get much cheaper overall.
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#13I agree with the premise that machines will increasing exceed our capabilities (and are improving quicker than we are). This seems so obvious as to be not debatable. I also think there are a lot of merits to online-education and Udacity seems to have the right general idea. On-line education needs to be more engaging and entertaining than simply videos and online collaboration. However, this whole "people need more s…
I agree with that. Not sure if the basic income is THE solution, I didn't think about it too much, but I agree with everything else. People don't need jobs, they need money. Jobs are the only legal way to get money but money is the issue, not jobs.
I'm honestly curious how many people on HN oppose mincome on grounds other than "we currently can't pay that much."
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We, as a species, absolutely can bring a first-world quality of life to everybody, so why shouldn't we? Not with the current lifestyle and the given ressources.
Not with the current technology and the given resources. Most of the biomass on the planet lives happily in its means. We need to think like that. That means building with carbon, not metal.
Most of the biomass on the planet is in a constant struggle to increase its means and usurp its competition. Humans are just really good at that game.
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to pivot our economic system towards a basic income model. So putting a floor on what people get each year seems like a pretty good idea. How about a ceiling as well? What's an equitable spread? 10x? 100x? Should the basic income given to residents of Manhattan be 2.5x what people in Wichita get?
>Should the basic income given to residents of Manhattan be 2.5x what people in Wichita get? One of the main arguments of basic income, as opposed to unemployment benefits, is to reduce the bureaucracy involved. So the answer would be an empathetic 'no'. Hopefully, having a guaranteed income decoupled from location would push people to populate cheaper places. And thus, rent would get much cheaper overall.
> reduce the bureaucracy involved
Basic income indexed to a geographical cost of living doesn't have to be a big bureaucracy problem. Plus, I think segregating by wealth is a terrible idea.
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#16Even though the standard of living is raised for all humans, it seems like advances in AI and automation will drastically reduce the percentage of productive members of society, in spite of educational opportunity.
Improving educational opportunities (a la Udacity) is a noble idea because it levels the playing field a bit (giving the underprivileged a chance), but the end result is the same - a small number of people will inevitably own AI, and the world by extension.
Assuming that the new AI titans are compelled to share their wealth with humanity, wouldn't less productive members of society still face existential threat? Improved standard of living only takes care of the first 2-3 layers of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs - but "esteem" and "self-actualization" are really important as well.
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Should the basic income given to residents of Manhattan be 2.5x what people in Wichita get? One of the main arguments of basic income, as opposed to unemployment benefits, is to reduce the bureaucracy involved. So the answer would be an empathetic 'no'. Hopefully, having a guaranteed income decoupled from location would push people to populate cheaper places. And thus, rent would get much cheaper overall.
> reduce the bureaucracy involved Basic income indexed to a geographical cost of living doesn't have to be a big bureaucracy problem. Plus, I think segregating by wealth is a terrible idea.
Checking that people actually live where they claim requires a big bureaucracy. For 2.5x the money a lot of people would claim to be homeless living in Manhattan.
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many great scientists (Einstein amongst them) get into trouble when they veer into Economics. Einstein predicted social unrest from massive unemployment due to productivity improvements. Productivity improvements help people in aggregate. The question here is will a small subset of the world accrue all the benefit from the AI productivity improvement? One answer is basic income, presumably based on taxation of the ri…
Russia tried that. When the USSR ended, they gave every one vouchers to bid for shares of state owned companies. The little people had no idea what they were doing and got screwed brutally. It created many of the ridiculously wealthy Russian oligarchs you see today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia
Interesting. The fundamental goal seemed a noble one, but it was badly implemented. Any lessons to take away?
One immediate idea is some kind of vesting, i.e. you can't actually sell your vouchers for X years (or stages, being able to sell certain percentages after a certain number of years).
A second idea is to encourage the formation of public interest associations to manage the ownership. There are already some non-traditional funds run with some social goals in addition to the goal of making money, perhaps that would help. (But I'm really just brainstorming right now.)
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#19[deleted]
Re: Google self-driving car pioneer wants to teach people how to face the future
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia tried that. When the USSR ended, they gave every one vouchers to bid for shares of state owned companies. The little people had no idea what they were doing and got screwed brutally. It created many of the ridiculously wealthy Russian oligarchs you see today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia
Interesting. The fundamental goal seemed a noble one, but it was badly implemented. Any lessons to take away? One immediate idea is some kind of vesting, i.e. you can't actually sell your vouchers for X years (or stages, being able to sell certain percentages after a certain number of years). A second idea is to encourage the formation of public interest associations to manage the ownership. There are already some no…
My knee-jerk reaction is that these people got bit because they weren't educated on the matter, so free education would've been helpful. Incidentally, I feel like that would help with the original problem as well.
I am really starting to think that government should reduce the cost of education as a public good.