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The rise of the useless class

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Re: The rise of the useless class

#41

Post by mattlevan »

ar15saveslives wrote: post #39

> 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.

Agreed. It'd be quite difficult to measure whether or not someone learns something new, anyway, because of the variety of things available to learn (large and small). If we're talking about learning entirely new skills, though, yea, obviously a cashier will probably not need to learn any significant new skills over the course of their career.

As always, people who do make learning new things a part of their life's rituals will generally be more successful than those who do not.

Nice username, by the way.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#42

Post by mattlevan »

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.

Ha. I think just about everyone with a pet has thought of that..

But, if actually given the opportunity, I doubt most people would take it!

Re: The rise of the useless class

#43

Post by mojomark »

Of course automation will inevitably be capable of displacing all human acts (jobs and art). The author concludes with the same tired, naiive and unsatisfactory outlook: 'you don't need worry about it because robots will just kill off humans'.

However, it seems obvious that humanity will handle this like many cultures have - by choice. Just like some people chose not to eat GM food, and others (Amish) generally elect not to use electricity, humans too will reach a point where they will simply choose to either accept that their lives are 100% sustained by autonomy or, live a life free of AI-generated products (i.e. food, services, art, etc).

Re: The rise of the useless class

#44

Post by cr0sh »

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…

> 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.

Perhaps if we keep insisting that robots need to look like a human in some form factor.

Otherwise, we are already there. We already have fully autonomous forklift robot systems in warehouses and other similar jobs. I know such robots will also be used in construction and elsewhere, if they aren't already (all of the heavy equipment manufacturers are working on such systems today). Smaller lifting tasks (think in a grocery store or other retail outlet) could be done by smaller but similar machines.

Change the shelving system and/or the packaging to accommodate the objects being lifted and put into place, and the entire thing can likely be automated. I can easily see stores like Walmart or Costco doing this. Right now, the only thing stopping them is the cost (the robots themselves are one thing, changing the shelves, packaging, stores, etc - that's going to be a great expense). Perhaps as time goes on, they'll do it first in new stores being built.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#45

Post by sebringj »

This is short-term pessimism, inline with the common dystopian future of sci-fi. It is really difficult to predict human behaviors and technology in the long term.

Humans have the ability to steer things to their advantage so interesting things can happen.

Just for kicks here's a more hopeful approach that I've heard...merge AI with the brain like Kurzweil was predicting. Imagine if everyone was a genius and telekinetic so then we get the neural internet from that. We would actually be less divided, more connected and more productive as a human race. Our current sense of self is too selfish and our intellect too limited. I'm sure it would be very difficult to hold on to beliefs devoid of reason in that case so everyone could make better decisions, not just about themselves but about humanity, etc. because they could perceive things at a grander scale.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#47

Post by xenihn »

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.

>Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

This is the kind of life I'd like to prepare for my kids :)

Re: The rise of the useless class

#48

Post by devonkim »

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.

The problem is that the financial performance and massive inertia of these organizations are becoming such financial liabilities that our economies will be held back by organizational / cultural and technical debt at the same time in these organizations. I've been observing the trend for the past decade where the top tech companies are accelerating in output while most of the large institutions are falling further and further behind. Intel can keep pushing all the way to the theoretical limits of silicon for transistor size, but the economic costs including just sheer interest on fab facilities alone of getting there would bankrupt the company or hurt its credit rating.

To put it into a more concrete analogy, Google is putting out autonomous cars when tons of companies are celebrating releasing the Model T or are still currently developing it with massive delays and cost overruns. Meanwhile, much of the appetite for government spending is dwindling for various reasons and this will cause a lot of strife that hurts already-slow moving organizations. Furthermore, brand recognition by the current generation of entrepreneurs for old hat technology companies is looking absolutely horrific. The next Fortune 500 CEOs 30 years from now are likely in their 30s or 40s now and they're well aware of the lack of compelling vision by so-called "technology" companies that are really just technology re-sellers and are thus unsuitable partners for increasingly tech-reliant businesses (the few that don't have such plans may be so clueless they won't matter).

Re: The rise of the useless class

#49

Post by kbos87 »

mojomark wrote: post #43

Of course automation will inevitably be capable of displacing all human acts (jobs and art). The author concludes with the same tired, naiive and unsatisfactory outlook: 'you don't need worry about it because robots will just kill off humans'. However, it seems obvious that humanity will handle this like many cultures have - by choice. Just like some people chose not to eat GM food, and others (Amish) generally elect…

I'm curious to see how long it will take for the world to experience any meaningful kind of pushback against automation or AI. Today, I feel like all I see are a dwindling number of people saying they'd "rather deal with a real person", and a growing number of people who come close to fetishizing automation.

Maybe once Uber decides to flip the switch on all of the drivers who are now dependent on them for some if not all of their income, we'll see people in the streets vandalizing and otherwise circumventing empty self driving vehicles.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#50

Post by CaptSpify »

Jtsummers wrote: post #29
DashRattlesnake wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> supermarket cashiers Why do you think they're useless? They certainly aren't currently [1]. Someone has to do their work, either paid employees or unpaid volunteers (i.e. customers). [1] at least until that Amazon fantasy-land store becomes a practical reality, if it ever does

Half the cashier's job is automated (tallying is managed by scanning in the items, payment is handled by using the customer facing CC machine; they only handle cash, checks, and manual entry of produce). Bagging is often handled by cashiers, customers, or dedicated baggers. Baggers are cheap, the only skill required is to know not to put eggs beneath a half-gallon of milk (though many seem not to know this anymore).…

This is what I think most people miss when they criticize automation. It's not that an android-looking robot will come and stand in your spot and do your job, it's that automation makes one person more effective, and able to do the job of multiple people.
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