The AI revolution will wake up the west to the realities of capitalism. Trump's spat with China over trade barriers is just one example of America coming to terms with the fact that capitalism has no sense of patriotism or morality. If the price (of labour) is right capitalists will do business with anyone. The capitalist philosophy, based on Adam Smith's "invisible hand" which mysteriously takes care of the common good, is a fallacy behind which the greed of the 1% masquerades as success. Capitalism's goal is to drive down the price of labour which it can only see as a cost. AI is the capitalist's dream, presenting for the first time the possibility of eliminating human labour altogether. There is only one question we must ask as a society - to whom will the capitalists of the AI age be accountable? Marx wrote about this endgame 150 years ago and of all the economists since then I'd say his analysis has been the most accurate.
At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
161–170 of 195 posts
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#162We can only pray that AI will help correct knowledge inequality.
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#163There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…
This is sufficiently simplistic to be tone deaf to what's going on. The rhetoric has been "jobs!" but this isn't a complaint that there are no jobs; the complaint is two fold, a.) lack of work that utilize people's interest and/or skills b.) lack of work that pays what people expect or even need to get ahead. Wage stagnation is a real problem. It's a kind of vectorized unemployment where everyone in the middle class…
I don't hear much discussion of real income in this thread. The working class in the UK and USA are being impoverished from 2 directions at once - plummeting real income and escalating property prices/rents. I'd like to see some data which factors in all of these variables.
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#164There's a lot believers in technological unemployment here on HN and one thing I think that viewpoint misses is just how darn resilient humans are to changes in the economy. In the past 150 years, we've seen human manual labor replaced by mechanical labor. Think about that -- a lot of early California settlers walked here, and now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car. Ag…
There is also a large proportion of people whose standard of living is a step back from being self-sufficient modest farmers living with family off their own land. I'll all for technological advancement. As a society, we've accomplished marvelous things. But it's useful to remember whether individuals are actually improving their standard of living or not. > now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horse…
You're telling me. My partner here in London works full-time as a cleaning supervisor and after she has paid her rent, bills and travel costs she has a paltry £65 with which to shop for food. And that's renting a room in a house. A 1-bed flat for her is out of the question. I think my parents in the early 60s were better off than her in real terms.
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like there's significant overlap between people that are afraid of AI and those that think e^x has a "knee in the curve." It's amazing they're not called out considering "the derivative of e^x is e^x" is memorized by HS calculus students daily. - [1] Elon Musk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/702534707464896512 ? - [2] Kurzweil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#Expone... - [3] Gates ap…
I like this visual explanation of the illusion/fallacy: http://www.abarry.org/knee.htm
Is the group-think in our industry really so bad that we can't call Musk on outing himself as failing basic calculus?
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#166I think a lot of people here are missing why these labor changes will be so harmful.
Yes, when agriculture, industrialization, etc, emerged, old jobs were replaced with new jobs that people could not have previously predicted.
But these new jobs are terrible. They are degrading, dehumanizing, and absurd. We have 63% labor participation, and about half* the people working do nothing. They make Power Point slides, they send emails, they form working groups, they schedule conference calls to schedule other conference calls. Apple hires a bunch of lawyers to sue Samsung. Samsung hires a bunch of lawyers to defend itself. Nothing is accomplished. They all feel like shit, they're addicted to the internet and they are on prescription anti-depressants.
These jobs are rituals, they are not productive in any sense.
When ancient Egyptians developed agriculture, they did not go on to live lives of luxury. Workers who would previously have spent their days hunting and gathering instead spent their days pushing limestone blocks up to the top of the pyramid.
*bullshit on my part, but look at these statistics (https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm) and come up with an industry-by-industry estimate for yourself, it is depressingly high
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#167This is all you need to read from the article: > Advances in artificial intelligence will lead to job losses, but new forms of employment will take their place...History, though, has demonstrated that technological breakthroughs lead to new employment opportunities -- IBM CEO Ginni Rometty But, I think we are approaching (if we haven't already crossed this point) the time where new jobs created by technology advancem…
Thanks for posting that quote and saving me the trouble of reading it. I thought he might have actually had some original insight to bring to this issue.
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"Horses are tools that people used. When there's no more use for the tool, it's usage may be reduces. People are not just tools, they are the reason we have an economy in the first place. A solution in some form will have to be put forth if one doesn't emerge." Putting aside my dislike for considering horses as tools, you're missing an important point. Economies only have to function for those at the top in order to…
> Putting aside my dislike for considering horses as tools Well, I labeled humans as tools as well, so I'm not treating horses any differently in that respect than I am people, so I think you inferred a slightly different connotation for tool than I meant. Interestingly, the ability to see horses as non-tools is possible largely because their usefulness as a tool was surpassed by other technology. The same with cats…
>" Interestingly, the ability to see horses as non-tools is possible largely because their usefulness as a tool was surpassed by other technology."
For you maybe, I'd say it's largely because they're sentient beings we share this planet with.
>"when the populace cares enough, that disproportionate influence is a drop in the bucket compared to the influence of an incited populace."
It's a nice idea, but compassion fatigue is a real phenomenon.
http://www.compassionfatigue.org/
If injustices were few and far between, I'd have more hope your approach could work, but considering the scale of the issues we face I don't think we can rely on mobilising the population into action over every injustice. Furthermore, the mass media still plays a large role in spreading misinformation, and smaller news outlets often lack the resources to carry out in-depth investigative journalism. I'd suggest any widespread political movement that doesn't tackle these issues head on is fighting an uphill battle from the start.
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate those self checkout machines. They are slow and constantly try to error out and alert a human to help me. I'm capable of bagging groceries, just let me do it. still, there is rarely a line.
They are incredibly simple to use if you follow the 3 instructions. But hey, people can't even signal when turning reliable, of course a lot of people are going to have problems with these machines.
WORKS4ME, bug report marked CLOSED
Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this time it is different. I like the comparison to horses. Steam engines and trains threatened to replace horses in the mid 1800s. A lot of things that were previously done by horses were replaced with trains and steam engines. Yet the horse population grew, and cities remained full of horses. There were countless transportation innovations in the 1800s, from canals to streetcars and omnibuses to bicycles. But…
> The vast majority of humans can not be trained to be computer programmers. I disagree with the general sentiment. What makes humans different is that we can become skilled. Imagine the big slave population that was used to build the pyramids in ancient Egypt. Suddenly, modern construction machinery appears over there, making them "unemployed" (slaves had a cost too). I would bet only a very very small part of those…
Nitpick: Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were actually built by well paid, reasonably skilled workers that were treated decently, and not by slaves:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-ht...