Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 245 posts

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#131

Post by TeMPOraL »

leereeves wrote: post #127
TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the counterargument here is that if you don't need to move humans to work and back home again every day, and if you don't need to optimize workplace conditions for humans - by providing creature comforts and safety equipment - your unemployed human is using much less resources than a working human, and the robot is also using much less resources than a working human, so the sum of unemployed human + working r…

> resources are here to be burned for our comfort. Shouldn't we also consider comfort in the future? For that, we must manage resources to avoid exhausting them or destroying ecosystems, because that would create a very uncomfortable future.

Of course! I meant exactly that, though I guess I could have stated that more explicitly for clarity.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#132

Post by jbooth »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #121
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That may happen one day, but at the moment we have a scarcity of labor rather than a surplus. Then why have real wages dropped for much of the population, and why is the labor share of GDP at an all-time low?

First of all, this is a non-sequitur. Market prices can go up or down while scarcity still exists. Scarcity is simply a situation where a lot of people want a good or service, but not all of them can have it. Secondly, your claims about market prices are not even directionally correct. Real wages have dropped because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. (This effect is larger at the bottom, since non-wage…

If we're talking about economics, I'd say that a 'scarcity' which isn't pushing wages up isn't a scarcity worth thinking about. Money talks.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#133

Post by alanwatts »

_yosefk wrote: post #90

"If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, 66 percent of jobs in finance and insurance could be replaced, the most recent report says." If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, probably >99% of all jobs could be replaced, 'cause it's pretty close to passing the Turing test. I'm willing to get monthly payments from anyone who wants to bet until this happ…

The difference between your comparison is that automation of finance/insurance would be achieved purely by mathematical calculations performed by software, while the automation of many/most other jobs would require much more complex robotics.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

unprepare wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly? It's what we do, since we first tamed fire.

you are suggesting the purpose for resources existing at all are purely for human consumption. essentially you're peddling the argument of "god put oil on earth for us to burn, if we dont burn it, its a waste!"

Well, if not used by us, then they just are. They have no other purpose but the one we assign to them. It's like with that whole "save the planet" thing. The planet doesn't need saving. The planet doesn't care. It's we who care about having a habitable and pleasant environment.

I probably didn't make it clear enough, but what I'm suggesting is to use available resources to create better world for us and every future generation. The argument is more like "god put oil on earth for us to bootstrap a sustainable technological civilization with it".

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#135

Post by aninhumer »

unprepare wrote: post #124
TeMPOraL wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly? It's what we do, since we first tamed fire.

you are suggesting the purpose for resources existing at all are purely for human consumption. essentially you're peddling the argument of "god put oil on earth for us to burn, if we dont burn it, its a waste!"

"Purpose" is a human construct, so yes, in as far as oil can have purpose, it is for us to burn. And if burning oil would result in a net increase in utility, then not doing so is indeed a waste.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#136

Post by alanwatts »

Noseshine wrote: post #58
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #25

the underlying message from the top is rather brutal (or with a healthy dose of realism?): "No matter if you're farmer, factory worker or good with your hands, learn to code or be prepared to get swept away." Obama's message to the kids about learning to code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XvmhE1J9PY

But the only reason for having vastly more people with coding abilities is to lower the price of coding. There is no need for so many coders. Every app, every piece of code has to be written just once , then replication is free - that's even worse than in industry, where everything needs to be developed just once too but at least production required people.

>Every app, every piece of code has to be written just once, then replication is free

This is true in terms of physical reality, but not in terms of the patent system.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#138

Post by alanwatts »

w8rbt wrote: post #66

"Politicians need to begin thinking boldly, now, about a world in which driverless vehicles replace most truck drivers’ jobs..." Can we replace politicians with robots?

Reminds me of a Buckminster Fuller quote:

>"I'm going to give you an important kind of a picture. I hear a lot of people say "I don't like machinery and technology it's making a lot of trouble", so we're going to take all the machinery away from all the countries of the world, all machinery, all the tracks and the wires, and the works and were going to dump it all in the ocean. And you'll discover that within 6 months, 2 billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain. So we say, "that's not a very good idea, let's put all the machinery back where it was".

Then, we're going to take all the politicians from all the countries around the world and we're going to send them on a trip around the sun, and you'll find we keep right on eating. And the political barriers now...scientists say very clear you could make the world work and take care of 100% of the people at a higher standard of living than anyone has ever known despite the increasing population, but you can't do it with the political barriers, any more than you can try run a human organism with a wall between the ear, the eye, and the stomach. It is an organic whole, it is total industrialization."

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#139

Post by sverige »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #123
sverige wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People feel bad about being on welfare because they want to work. They want to be productive. They want to have a purpose.

beep beep I. am. a. person. I want... prooo ductive. I want... puur pose. I will. Take the orders. From a capital-supplier. To prooo duce economic vallll-ue. I. am. Totally. Not. a robot. beep beep /s Seriously, though? People want to be exploited because they need a wage-paying employer to give them purpose ? Then where are all the people who don't work for someone else getting this much-vaunted "purpose", eh? Whate…

Work is exploitive only when you're not compensated adequately for it, or if you cannot leave that job voluntarily. And I assume that by "people who don't work for someone else," you are referring to people who still work rather than, say, landowners who collect rents whose main work is to go to the bank to make a deposit.

People can be both ends and means and be quite content. Personally, I think there is too much emphasis on people being ends unto themselves in the current culture. Madonna is a great example of this. She ceased to be entertaining more than 30 years ago, yet I still come across news snippets about her. Why?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#140

Post by drzaiusapelord »

cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency. Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on…

The worker would be using vastly less resources. In my life I spent so much money/time/energy commuting to work and everything that entails having a job, not to mention time wasted in adult education, post grad degrees, trainings, etc I would never need as non-working welfare person. Heck, college is questionable as well. So there's a majority of my debt/spending there, ignoring my mortgage. Also, a robot doesn't need breaks, a cubicle, vacation, etc so its using vastly less resources.

Businesses would be forced to compete so those savings would be passed to the consumer which means a lower cost of living. Not to mention taxing automated businesses to pay for this new welfare/UBI/whatever.

Seems like a win-win to me once things shake out.

Post reply on HN