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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

#91

Post by 6d6b73 »

Automation will turn capitalism will turn into somewhat benevolent corporate city-states. Imagine a city run by a corporation which tries to automate, and optimize everything that is not its core business. To make the employees and their families happy, the corporation will provide the best care (child, health, environment) possible. In time this will turn some of these city-states into efficient, clean, healthy, happy places to live, but only relatively small groups of people will be able to enjoy it. Some of these city-states will be very dystopian and people living in there will be miserable. Technological and societal progress in these "utopian" cities will be much faster than in "dystopian" which will possibly lead to wars.

We will not solve automation driven unemployment by taxing robots, and UBI will generally not work on a country wide scale. Partial solution will be Corporate UBI, which basically will mean that if you work for Corp X, you and your family will have everything they desire provided for them. As for everyone else..

This is already happening on some smaller scale. All these corporate campuses are beginning of that. They will eventually grow to become self-sufficient cities.

Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them?

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

#92

Post by mafribe »

mattmanser wrote: post #72
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…

   Almost all slave rebellions 
   ended in failure,
Interestingly most slave rebellions were not about the abolition of slavery as an institution but about flipping the slave/slaveholder role.

An interesting recent example of this phenomenon is the religion Rastafarianism where the notion of paradise is a state of affairs where whites are slaves to blacks.

   example of success in the millenia of 
   slaves, Haiti.
Success in the sense of formal liberation of slaves and abolition of slavery, yes, very much. Success in the sense of creating a viable society? Hmmm ...

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

#93

Post by lprubin »

6d6b73 wrote: post #91

Automation will turn capitalism will turn into somewhat benevolent corporate city-states. Imagine a city run by a corporation which tries to automate, and optimize everything that is not its core business. To make the employees and their families happy, the corporation will provide the best care (child, health, environment) possible. In time this will turn some of these city-states into efficient, clean, healthy, hap…

> Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them?

It depends on if there are other viable/satisfactory (or better) options that you can voluntarily switch to.

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

#94

Post by gm-conspiracy »

visarga wrote: post #47
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-…

> Once we enter an era where every person is effectively coddled by multiple robotic "slaves" that do their every whim We're already there. Cars, computers and all sorts of machines serve our every whim - at least compared to a few hundred years ago. Our modern day affordances are simply amazing. For example, the Empress Sissi of Habsburg was the first person in Vienna to have a water toilet, 150 years ago. It was co…

I recommend this documentary (was on Netflix):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2274520/

The Toilet: An Unspoken History

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

#95

Post by 6d6b73 »

lprubin wrote: post #93
6d6b73 wrote: post #91

Automation will turn capitalism will turn into somewhat benevolent corporate city-states. Imagine a city run by a corporation which tries to automate, and optimize everything that is not its core business. To make the employees and their families happy, the corporation will provide the best care (child, health, environment) possible. In time this will turn some of these city-states into efficient, clean, healthy, hap…

> Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them? It depends on if there are other viable/satisfactory (or better) options that you can voluntarily switch to.

But switching might not be that easy. When you have kids in schools, your wife helps at a local X , and your parents depend on health care provided by the corp, it could be virtually impossible for a person to switch.

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

#96

Post by danmaz74 »

pygy_ wrote: post #27
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-…

With capital becoming self-sufficient and human labour non-competitive, why would you think robots would serve us on a large scale? What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? Automation is destroying the only power that people still had over capital. Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Edit:…

> What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags?

And what's the incentive for a robot to do anything else?

Supposing that future AIs will be based not on deterministic programming, but on some kind of reinforcement learning, it will still be humans who will design the rewards (incentives) - or it will be AIs with rewards designed by humans who will design the rewards of other AIs, and so on.

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

#97

Post by elsewhen »

WalterBright wrote: post #14

Slave labor is economically inefficient, and slave based economies have fared very poorly compared with free labor economies.

> slave based economies have fared very poorly

that may be true for the economy in general, but what about the slave owners specifically? that is the central point in the context of this discussion, since it is the factory owners that are making the decision about replacing human workers with robots.

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

#98

Post by pygy_ »

danmaz74 wrote: post #96
pygy_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With capital becoming self-sufficient and human labour non-competitive, why would you think robots would serve us on a large scale? What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? Automation is destroying the only power that people still had over capital. Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Edit:…

> What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? And what's the incentive for a robot to do anything else? Supposing that future AIs will be based not on deterministic programming, but on some kind of reinforcement learning, it will still be humans who will design the rewards (incentives) - or it will be AIs with rewards designed by humans who will design the rewards of other AIs, and so on.

None, it's just that "the market"/"the economy" as a self-maximizer process will select robots that feed it. Humans are just no longer the fittest links in the chain.

I'm not afraid of super-Einstein evil masterminds. More of heavy machinery with ant-like features that control the food/energy supply, and one day stop feeding us.

At some point farm land will become more valuable as a source of industrial energy than as a way to produce food.

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

#99

Post by singularity2001 »

Just to throw in a thought/data point:

Nvidia is currently selling their 'industrial' deep learning system DGX-1 for $129,000. It doesn't have the IQ of a mouse yet, yet it can beat humans in some tasks (as can mice?).

[0] http://www.nvidia.com/object/deep-learning-system.html

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

#100

Post by lotu »

6d6b73 wrote: post #95
lprubin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them? It depends on if there are other viable/satisfactory (or better) options that you can voluntarily switch to.

But switching might not be that easy. When you have kids in schools, your wife helps at a local X , and your parents depend on health care provided by the corp, it could be virtually impossible for a person to switch.

Comparing the inconvince of having to switch schools, not being able to volunteer and depending on healtcare/insurance to slavery is a massive insult to people that where and are actual slaves.

Actual slaves did not legally own themselves or their children. Their owners can did take children, parents, and spouse and sell them to different slaveholders so they would never see each other again. A slave could not say fuck this my master is rapping and beating me daily so I'm just going to leave.

If you want to a simple question to determine if someone is slave or not ask what happens if punch your boss in the face. An employe will be fired and never work their ever again, a slave will have to continue to work their for the rest of their life.

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