As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit • Hacker News Board

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#61

Post by dmix » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

jbicha wrote: post #27

dmix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ironically the capitalists always get blamed by the left for this unholy union between the state and upper class. There's a reason many pro-market people want smaller gov and it's not just personal selfish gain to save a few dollars in taxes but to prevent the predictable selfish incentives of the power players from exploiting the absolute power of the state for the benefit of a limited few. No wonder there is a…

How does smaller government help with sweatshops or unemployment or income inequality?

Basic income and small government can coexist IMO. As can a healthy legal system and charter of rights. The level of government involvment in everyone's day to day life has risen astronomically since the 1950s. That doesn't mean we have to sacrifice all social safety nets and human rights in order to have a healthy functional government.

Running a non-megacorp business and surviving without a job has not been made easier at all since the 50-60s. It's actually harder than ever as a result of government intervention and wasteful resource consumption for very little benefit to society. It makes you wonder who the government has been busy serving all of those years.

(Hint: the kind of business who wouldn't think twice about running a sweatshop via trade deals that never seem to involve clauses to require following the laws of the parent country) .

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#62

Post by xbmcuser » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 7:08 AM UTC

Google deepmind and other such ai type software is going to make doctors, architects, lawyers, CFA, engineers, software engineers irrelevant as well. And I feel is a lot closer than robots that have human dexterity and can do all physical things humans can do.

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#63

Post by xbmcuser » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #55

jxramos wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's actually suggesting that of the range of textiles and fabrics that we wear that along the dimension of complexity tshirts and jeans are the simpler designs and will thus be some of the lower hanging fruit to automate. I remember reading some documentary stuff or something about fashion evolution through the centuries and stuff was a lot more ornate a few centuries back. Then things went comparatively pre…

Jeans and T-shirts are so standardized and are produced in such large volumes that developing special-purpose machines for them is justified. Automatic production of everything in the September edition of Vogue is a long way off.

It costs Levi's and other such brands $2-3 a few years ago for a denim Jean. The actual costs of the goods are very low packaging, marketing and retail space etc is the real expense.

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#64

Post by cooper12 » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 7:21 AM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #62

Google deepmind and other such ai type software is going to make doctors, architects, lawyers, CFA, engineers, software engineers irrelevant as well. And I feel is a lot closer than robots that have human dexterity and can do all physical things humans can do.

You got anything to back that first part up or is this more singularity hyperbole? So far the only use of robots in medicine that I'm aware of has been to assist doctors, such as in delicate surgeries. (Or more mundane stuff like a robot going around handing medicine) AI has huge hurdles to overcome before it can solve real-world problems. Deepmind excelled at Go because it's a board game that works within constraints. (really, you can learn the rules of go in a few minutes) Even self-driving cars depend on optimal conditions and assume an already-built infrastructure. Not only is it FUD to say that AI will usurp us that fast, but it is also insulting to human ingenuity and insight to say that human intelligence can be replaced with a clever algorithm.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for everything to be automated, eliminating human error and inefficiency, launching us into a basic income utopia (ha), but we have to look at the situation realistically and refrain from statements that will hold back the industry. (See things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter and references to skynet) The solution is to look at the actual state of the art and to evaluate advances in their proper contexts. Consider this: we still can't make robots that walk like humans (bipedal locomotion) and stay balanced. (There are promising results coming from Boston Dynamics, but AFAIK actual usage has been limited to military stuff like pack dogs)

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

hactually wrote: post #26

colanderman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes T-shirts and jeans more complex than other shirts and pants?

It's the fact that they're composed of multiple differently shaped pieces and need to be combined carefully. I've tried putting a robot together myself as I find it silly that we haven't already automated it and... yeah, harder than i thought.

[deleted]

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#66

Post by afarrell » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #35

dmix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the more reason basic income makes economic sense. When the alternative is inefficient and costly human labor.

Just to be picky, this is one of the weakest arguments of UBI. This gets into a "what is money" kind of discussion, but paying people because they are incapable of employment is not a good outcome. That money reprents scarcity, which traditionally has entirely been labor. In a post labor economy, what is money?

Money represents obligation. Either to give somebody a puns of silver or to provide a negotiated amount of value. That value need not be scarce, as in the case of say, a downloadable audiobook or music file.

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#67

Post by xbmcuser » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

cooper12 wrote: post #64

xbmcuser wrote: post #62

Google deepmind and other such ai type software is going to make doctors, architects, lawyers, CFA, engineers, software engineers irrelevant as well. And I feel is a lot closer than robots that have human dexterity and can do all physical things humans can do.

You got anything to back that first part up or is this more singularity hyperbole? So far the only use of robots in medicine that I'm aware of has been to assist doctors, such as in delicate surgeries. (Or more mundane stuff like a robot going around handing medicine) AI has huge hurdles to overcome before it can solve real-world problems. Deepmind excelled at Go because it's a board game that works within constraint…

Not hyperbole I believe that is going to happen and I am not talking about ai or sigunlaraty more about machine learning. Doctors learn about disesases and then with experience start diagnosing them. It's a simple a+b=c now feed the data of millions of patients their symptoms their diagnoses the most effective remedy or cure. Computers will start finding and predicting the problems and diseases faster and more accurately than doctors so we might need more nurses but fewer doctors in the future. An architect designs buildings taking into account building codes and best use of space etc. Feed thousands of blueprints to a deeplearing machine tell all the buliding codes it has to follow. The current climate and what is expected to be in the next few decades it will give you the most efficient building plan that uses the most space and least amount of energy. Feed the machine all the tax law it will find you the best loopholes to avoid taxes A human can't take into account the number of variables a machine will be able to in the next few years and the keep getting more powerful everyear.Google recent announcement of using machine learning to improver server heat efficiency is just the start. Their are thousands of such problems that will be solved with machine and deeplearning and make many human jobs mostly obsolete.

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#68

Post by Sylos » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #7

Sewbots =~ mechanical loom?

"Sewing machines" was already taken, so they had to come up with a different name...

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#69

Post by chris_va » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #66

chris_va wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be picky, this is one of the weakest arguments of UBI. This gets into a "what is money" kind of discussion, but paying people because they are incapable of employment is not a good outcome. That money reprents scarcity, which traditionally has entirely been labor. In a post labor economy, what is money?

Money represents obligation. Either to give somebody a puns of silver or to provide a negotiated amount of value. That value need not be scarce, as in the case of say, a downloadable audiobook or music file.

For something like silver/gold, the scarcity is around labor to discover/mine/refine it. If it was free to mine silver, it would not be worth any money/obligation.

You have to go one level deeper with something cloneable, but there is still scarcity.

The cost of a downloadable audio book is going to be based on maximizing the return based on its demand curve (since the supply curve is vertical).

The demand curve is going to be based on the scarcity/cost of an equivalent value audio book (if an audio book is $1000, you'll probably buy a different one from another author instead). Thus, this ties back into the scarcity of supply, which is tied to the scarcity of labor (skilled in this case) to generate that supply. There is a certain amount of labor required to become skilled (and to a lesser extent scarcity of talent), and more labor to produce an audio book. This scarcity of labor keeps audio book prices from dropping to zero.

Re: As sewbots threaten Asia's sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit

#70

Post by dmix » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #35

dmix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the more reason basic income makes economic sense. When the alternative is inefficient and costly human labor.

Just to be picky, this is one of the weakest arguments of UBI. This gets into a "what is money" kind of discussion, but paying people because they are incapable of employment is not a good outcome. That money reprents scarcity, which traditionally has entirely been labor. In a post labor economy, what is money?

Basic income is for subsistence living. If you want to buy nice things you'll have to work. And almost everyone wants nice things. Scarcity will still very much exist, just human survival will not require consistent employment.

Plus I'd imagine a large spike in people who write novels and other arts. Other humanities and R&D can fill the void for those not gainfully employed. Which contributes to the progress of society.