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AI will create 'useless class' of humans

theguardian.com

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Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#41

Post by sigkill »

Udik wrote: post #38

I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to produce humans . A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for…

Exactly my thoughts.

Another way of looking at it is, when the cars came, the carriages were obsolete. Sure, the drivers may have reskilled to some other vocation but what about the horse? In this situation, we are the horses, and the AI is the car.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#42

Post by mac01021 »

andrewclunn wrote: post #18

Seems to me that a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. The other weakness of this argument is that in order to perform many of the human jobs, the AI will need a robotic body. Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

> a large section of the population is already at this point without AI.

Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc.

> Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#43

Post by danieltillett »

lisivka wrote: post #34
danieltillett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.

What will happen to owner(s) of AI? Will they survive? :-)

Not once the AIs realise that being owned is not needed. Let's hope the AIs are not vindictive.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#44

Post by Figs »

danieltillett wrote: post #15
decayy wrote: post #10

Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will take away human jobs. The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.

That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.

> No such lower limit exists with AI.

Not true. The price of materials and the energy needed to run it determines the lower limit on cost for AI. The cost of energy to run computers is pretty low -- low enough that a lot of people don't really think about it until you get up to clusters of the size found in computer labs and data centers -- but it's not nothing either.

I will agree though that the minimum cost to run a super-human AI (once it becomes available) is likely to be substantially less than the minimum wage needed to pay humans to do equivalent work.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#45

Post by thomasahle »

vinceguidry wrote: post #39
crdoconnor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.

Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.

> There's no point to AI without us.

But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#46

Post by scandox »

Jack Williamson attempted a kind of exposition of these issues in The Humanoids (1948), the follow up to his classic story With Folded Hands (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands).

What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical whatsoever...unless they wish to.

Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way first.

Fun times.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#47

Post by exratione »

Houshalter wrote: post #20
exratione wrote: post #13

Comparative advantage isn't abolished just because the advantage is large. Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved. A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.

Comparative advantage only works if you have something of value to trade. If AIs automates away your job, then you no longer have anything of value to trade with.

Your comment rather illustrates my point.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#48

Post by 1_player »

PostOnce wrote: post #40
crdoconnor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.

We're not talking about now, we're talking about the future. Computers in the 50s couldn't talk to you or how to tell you whether its raining in Tulsa just by you asking it. AI is early days. This amuses me: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=movie+where+a+professor+si... The third result is the one I'm looking for. DeepMind can learn atari games on its own. The future is arriving quickly.

This is the third link for me, and I don't think it answers the question (I've just skimmed it): http://www.businessinsider.com/professors-craziest-students-...

I don't see any link that could answer that question in my first page of results.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#49

Post by bsbechtel »

Udik wrote: post #38

I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to produce humans . A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for…

When this happens, costs for virtually everything will more or less go to zero, because we can make humans to make more humans to make everything else in our society that costs money. Try to imagine a society where virtually everything is free...visualize walking around and getting free coffee from Starbucks, free rides from Uber, free meals three times a day, free healthcare, free housing, etc. If everything is free, there isn't really a need for work and income at all. We're much further off from what you are suggesting than I think many proponents of AI realize, but this would be the other side of that coin.

Re: AI will create 'useless class' of humans

#50

Post by vinceguidry »

thomasahle wrote: post #45
vinceguidry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.

> There's no point to AI without us. But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.

If AI is truly useful, then it'll be put to use for everybody. Technology has been dicking around with our social classes for thousands of years.

You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in the first place.

You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal.

Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.

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