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

The rise of the useless class

ideas.ted.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 125 posts

Re: The rise of the useless class

#31

Post by yazan94 »

Anderkent wrote: post #12
shas3 wrote: post #6

I'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…

>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) Actually, those jobs are still there. The current useless class are the people who are not capable of holding a modern job. And they're not receiving the support from the society that they should. When…

> And they're not receiving the support from the society that they should. When you take away someone's ability to support themselves because there are new, more efficient ways of using the shared resources, they're entitled to compensation

What do you suppose is fair compensation for being replaced in that fashion? I think this is more complicated than just touting that we deserve basic income. Does an able-bodied person who chooses to not work deserve the same income as someone who is handicap and cannot work? And then the question arises of what amount of income is deemed sufficient?

In an age where income inequality is more of an issue than before[1], does someone on a basic income government program deserve as much as someone who obtained a degree and has a low paying job[2] (the averages here seem to be ~$35k for a low paying job. Keep in mind that the poverty level is about $16k[3] for a family of 2). How do you pay people on a basic income government program enough for a livable situation without making it unfair for people who are working for maybe just double the poverty limit?

[1] http://inequality.org/income-inequality/ [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=low+paying+college+degrees [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=federal+poverty+level

Re: The rise of the useless class

#32

Post by logfromblammo »

sevensor wrote: post #10
abrodersen wrote: post #4

Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.

But our telephones would become unsanitary!

We are way, way too late for that. We solved that problem by making sure each phone is only used by one person. So even if people poke their grubby fingers at their phones for the entire time they are sitting on their toilets, there won't be a planet-wide epidemic of a phone-vectored disease.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#33

Post by vostok »

yazan94 wrote: post #31
Anderkent wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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) Actually, those jobs are still there. The current useless class are the people who are not capable of holding a modern job. And they're not receiving the support from the society that they should. When…

> And they're not receiving the support from the society that they should. When you take away someone's ability to support themselves because there are new, more efficient ways of using the shared resources, they're entitled to compensation What do you suppose is fair compensation for being replaced in that fashion? I think this is more complicated than just touting that we deserve basic income. Does an able-bodied p…

> How do you pay people on a basic income government program enough for a livable situation without making it unfair for people who are working for maybe just double the poverty limit?

What about progressive taxation? Someone at double the poverty line might pay 10% and someone making $10 million might pay 60%.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#34

Post by coldtea »

Anderkent wrote: post #26
sophacles wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent, but all other things remaining the same, population growth alone will drive the need for more cashiers. Since ATMs did not stop population growth, percentage based metrics help account for that. So the different types of numbers can help drive home different points: * in absolute numbers, ATMs didn't cause any job losses. * in relative numbers, there are less job opportunities in this space. (e.g. the…

There's also the factory vs car improvement difference. Factories did not make workers obsolete; cars did make horses obsolete. I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.

>I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.

When those improvements are AI-driven automation, we can.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#35

Post by coldtea »

Ygg2 wrote: post #17
binarymax wrote: post #16

I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

Don't dogs have very little agency. They don't even decide when they get sprayed/neutered.

OK, replace it with cats. Which decide everything.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#36

Post by geforce »

charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

For this reason, I wouldn't be surprised if AI actually generate more work, at least for most of our lifetime. People that will supervise and correct AI errors while/after they process data, while current jobs mostly stays "until the AI is ready to actually take over".

If this makes you laugh, you have probably never worked in the public sector or big corps.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#37

Post by charles-salvia »

geforce wrote: post #36
charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

For this reason, I wouldn't be surprised if AI actually generate more work, at least for most of our lifetime. People that will supervise and correct AI errors while/after they process data, while current jobs mostly stays "until the AI is ready to actually take over". If this makes you laugh, you have probably never worked in the public sector or big corps.

Yeah - see my half-joke comment below

Re: The rise of the useless class

#38

Post by marcosdumay »

coldtea wrote: post #34
Anderkent wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the factory vs car improvement difference. Factories did not make workers obsolete; cars did make horses obsolete. I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.

> I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars. When those improvements are AI-driven automation, we can.

AI is a huge area that will lead to many advances, each one with different impact.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#39

Post by ar15saveslives »

> Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning, followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

That's already the case, imo.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#40

Post by massysett »

binarymax wrote: post #16

I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

If aliens landed in an American urban area, they would see dogs walking around with people behind them, picking up the poop, and special people who walk around with the dogs in the middle of the day, and the aliens would have to conclude that the dogs are the most important beings on the planet.
Post reply on HN