The rise of the useless class
ideas.ted.com
The rise of the useless class
1–10 of 125 posts
Re: The rise of the useless class
#2My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#3My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.
Nice one!
My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!
Re: The rise of the useless class
#4Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#5My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.
Nice one! My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!
It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term.
This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#6I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things:
1. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased.
2. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will we reach a point where it is cheaper to automate a job than hire a person? Think of non-forklift lifting/moving of heavy stuff, we don't really need people doing this manually, robots should be able to do it. But we see with the Boston Dynamics robots that we are many years or decades away from commoditizing lifting robots.
3. 'useless' class already exists. Employment and usefulness aren't necessarily the same. There are many millions of people in jobs that are 'useless' by some metrics (gas station attendant, supermarket cashiers, etc).
Re: The rise of the useless class
#7Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.
Did you consider that we would need to have scientists predict that the planet will be devoured by an enormous mutant star goat beforehand (or maybe a gigantic swarm of twelve foot piranha bees),and convince them about that didn't you? ;)
Re: The rise of the useless class
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice one! My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!
It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term. This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.
Globalization is centralization: finance is centralized in New York and London; manufacturing is centralized in China and Germany; IT outsourcing is centralized in India.
Over the 19th and early 20th century, the benefits of American westward expansion and the development of the industrial Midwest largely accrued to the big banks in New York. The same is occurring, just on a larger scale and accelerated due to leaps in technology.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#9what happens when human labor (and life) is cheaper than robotic output? storm the castle with a swarm of useless humans, or put your really expensive robot at risk?
Re: The rise of the useless class
#10Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.
But our telephones would become unsanitary!