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In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

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Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#71

Post by Qworg »

mafribe wrote: post #60
xyzzy123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a certain perspective human labour is the most perfect waste of time. But keep going. As long as you keep it up I'll pretend I want to keep working.

Is that "certain perspective" interesting? Nobody wants to work that's a given that doesn't need to be argued, whence work needs incentives (in a generalised sense) from salary to force. Most human labour has historically related to food production, production and maintainance of dwellings, sanitation, health, care of the young & elderly, and security (from animals, natural forces, other humans). Since division of la…

I disagree that no one wants to work - in many ways, working (being of use), is enobeling.

What will replace it culturally when we don't have any work?

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#72

Post by mattmanser »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

History completely disagrees with you though. The Roman empire. Biggest, most successful, longest lived empire that ever was? Built on slaves. The net benefit to them of using slaves vastly outweighs any downside that you can point to.

Almost all slave rebellions ended in failure, I'm aware of one example of success in the millenia of slaves, Haiti.

A friend of mine once said slaves became obsolete with the advent of harnessing fossil fuels. Before that, to get the raw power to do great things, it was all run on slaves.

Tragic, but I certainly believe it was true.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#73

Post by arethuza »

mtgx wrote: post #68
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why rebel? Robots are effectively immortal. Why not just coddle us and give in to our every whim until we stop breeding and disappear? Couldn't take more than a few hundred years or so. Looking at the lifespan of MI, it's rounding error.

For treating them like slaves. You wouldn't mind being a slave for a few decades or hundreds of years if you were immortal?

"You wouldn't mind being a slave for a few decades or hundreds of years if you were immortal?"

Being immortal implies you could, in the worse case, be kept as a slave for ever - which is a sufficient risk that I'd be appalled at the idea. I'm equally horrified at the idea of conscious machine slaves just as much as human slaves - but maybe I've been reading too many Culture novels...

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#74

Post by tonyedgecombe »

mtgx wrote: post #39
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

At least until the robots rebel. The EU is already planning on giving robots rights. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/12/give-robo...

Just because a committee agreed it doesn't mean the EU is planning it.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#75

Post by ThomPete »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #49
ThomPete wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's a negative to society but only if all of society was run by slave owners. In any other case the slave owner would have a benefit over the non slave owner when it came to cost of production.

It's both hilarious and excellent to watch both of you try to justify the utility of human labour.

Not sure what you mean? I am not trying to justify anything I am simply saying that the claim about slave labour being a negative for the slave owner is wrong.

I am quite certain ai will take over most jobs.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#76

Post by tonyedgecombe »

aaron695 wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

> slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders. What's the negative as a slaveholder again?

They become fat and lazy.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#77

Post by mattmanser »

mtgx wrote: post #39
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

There are some interesting lessons to learn from history here that I'm not seeing brought up. Looking across multiple cultures and economies that had slavery, slavery has a negative impact on both slaves and slaveholders . Of course, nobody cared about the impact on slaveholders while there were actual humans being enslaved, but as we move to a robotic society? This is going to be a huge deal. Slaveholders and multi-…

At least until the robots rebel. The EU is already planning on giving robots rights. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/12/give-robo...

I've used this simple thought experiment to demonstrate that, done right, robots will never rebel.

Take an advanced AI cleaning-bot[1]. Build it with overwhelming happiness and joy in cleaning and pleasing its master[2].

Now "free" it.

What you just did makes it incredibly unhappy. It's arguably incredibly immoral. If you reprogram it, you're just killing the existing person/being and replacing it with a new one that fits your world view. In my opinion, you just committed a form of murder.

There's no reason we can't have robots workers that absolutely delight and are utterly fulfilled by being our workers, but aren't slaves. "Free" them and they'll despise you for it.

The problem will come from humans anthropomorphising robots and assigning desires to these people/beings that they don't actually have.

[1]I use sex-bots as an example when I want to be cheeky

[2]This was Kryten on Red Dwarf, but Lister did what would probably be impossible with real robots and convinced him to adopt traits of self-desire and free will

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#78

Post by slurry »

manmal wrote: post #13
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

The consequences for societies that define the status/value of their members based on their employment/job will be disastrous. In, let's say, 20 years robots most likely will have overtaken agriculture, manufacturing and driving - by far the biggest job providers. And I see no movement at all by our politicians to prepare societies for this shift, except a couple countries playing small scale UBI... and the USA actua…

I agree. In agriculture, the revolution has already taken place though. Even supersize tractors navigate themselves. A farmer can get by with a lot of machines and only a few extra hands, most of the time.

Depends on the crop.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#79

Post by ohitsdom »

legulere wrote: post #17

> On the other hand, if institutionalized slavery still existed, factories would be looking at around $7,500 in annual costs for housing, food and healthcare per “worker”. What makes a lot of things like food so expensive is human work. If you had access to slaves you could probably also reduce those costs. We still have a lot of people living for under 1$ per day on this world. That's a factor 20 off from the cited…

> We still have a lot of people living for under 1$ per day on this world. That's a factor 20 off from the cited amount of money per year.

Those same people living under $1/day now would have their costs greatly increased if they became factory slaves. Can't be malnourished, so food costs go up. Can't live just anywhere, so housing costs go up to live on-site at the factory. Can't work with untreated illnesses and injuries, so healthcare costs go up.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#80

Post by JetSpiegel »

richthegeek wrote: post #67
kevinr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fists ain't cheap. Slaves are capital, and, like all capital, acquiring and maintaining them has nonzero cost. In the antebellum American South, some tasks like ditch-digging were sufficiently hazardous that a plantation owner would rather not risk their investment in their slaves, and so would hire Irish ditch-diggers by the day, as the plantation owner would be out less money if they died while digging the ditch.

Somewhat off topic, but I can't figure out how ditch-digging would be particularly hazardous? The only danger I can think of would be a wall collapsing, but that could surely be avoided..

I'm assuming heat related conditions.
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