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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

#101

Which will hopefully brings us to an inevitable change in our economics. If technological advance is going to create millions if not billions of unemployed people, the answer won't be rioting down the street and burning all machines in sight, although for many people this will appear the only viable solution.

This can also bring back collosiums where unwanted die for the pleasure of ruling class. People rioting down the street can be crushed by autonomous machines remorsely and effortlessly. There is a need to start political lobbying instead of hoping for an automatic economic change. Those who will control the means of production will not relinquish control once they realize their power. Once they understand that those…

> This can also bring back collosiums where unwanted die for the pleasure of ruling class.

Not dying, but the abundant talent shows where a whole generation seems to sacrifice all regular career ambition for a nonexistent fairy tale already comes close. On the other hand, maybe the kids somehow have a very prophetic hunch that taking a crapshot at becoming the nation's "next top model" or whatever will eventually turn out to be a less terrible bet than fighting for scraps in an environment of increasingly automation-driven capitalism that simply does not need them anymore.

The Black Mirror episode (spoilers!) with the training bikes nailed that quite well. When I watched it I was disappointed with the implausibility of a high tech society powered by the meagre 2 kWh you might realistically extract from a human per day. But this could actually be a subtle point made by the authors: the bikes are not really powering their economy, they are just a semi-plausible bullshit job made up in-world to make handouts look like a hard-earned wage, probably intended to fool those spinning the bikes as much as the elite who enjoys having the plebs nicely boxed up out of sight in underground caverns.

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

#102
post #100
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

True, but there are different levels/types of slavery.

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

#103
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…

> 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.

Heh, that's actually funny. Corporate campuses are nothing new. Corporate cities have been a thing for the last 60 (70?) years. They're actually on the decline, not on the rise. I doubt automation will change anything about that.

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

#104
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.

Another way to look at it: how do you expect people with zero economic power to be able to afford even a robotic servant?

Social security is beneficial to capitalism right now because people still have economic power. Paying a small portion of the people to stay idle home rather than become criminal makes society as a whole more productive. What happens when the productivity of most humans isn't needed anymore to keep the machines running?

What incentives does the market have to keep people alive when they don't serve it anymore?

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

#105
post #103
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…

> 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. Heh, that's actually funny. Corporate campuses are nothing new. Corporate cities have been a thing for the last 60 (70?) years. They're actually on the decline, not on the rise. I doubt automation will change anything about that.

I could be wrong, but I believe automation will change that simply because it will be easier for the corps to provide more services to employees without having to hire/control more people that are not necessary for the corporate city to function. It will also be easier to manage all these people using advanced automation/ai, and make the whole enterprise more profitable. It might not look like the old school corporate campuses with one corporation controlling everything, but more like cities with high concentration of similar businesses. These corporations usually have so much power in these cities that they basically control them.

Also, when automation starts to really impact most jobs on the market, we can expect that there will be some increase in crime. People will move towards safer areas, and corporations will be happy to provide them.

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

#106

"If it takes $2,000 to install what is basically an iPad and stand for customers to order from at McDonald’s or Chipotle, a restaurateur is looking at less than a month before recouping their entire investment if they eliminate just one cashier position." Obviously it takes a little bit more than that. You need to develop the software that runs on the kiosk. You also need a back-end system so the kitchen knows what t…

I do think that automating cashiers at McDonald’s would be a big mistake.

We tend to underestimate the human interaction, however it's far harder to refuse a "would you like fries with that?" type of question coming from a human, rather than from a stupid interface on which we'll tap "Skip" as an automatic gesture and without regrets.

Talking with another human is also good when you're undecided about what to buy. Of course, it's not like McDonald's is a varied restaurant, when in fact they are famous for having those 15 dishes taste the same wherever you go, but there's still choice involved when picking one of those burgers. And think of how in restaurants, even with a detailed menu with pictures, etc. people still ask the waiter "what do you recommend?".

So yes, you can automate a cashier, but this means that the customer McDonald’s interaction also gets automated in that process, this being a doubly edged sword and my guess is that it's not the customer that loses.

Oh, and the irony of this automation trend is that in the end there won't be enough people left to pay for McDonald’s shitty burgers, unless we progress towards some socialist society with minimal income and so on, in which case McDonald's raison d'être will cease to exist.

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

#107
post #32

Sooner or later, the robots and AI will be able to provide 100% of humanity material needs. AND The very nature of each societies will be shuffled by that new reality. When every material need is fulfilled, a lot of questions arise: 1- What's the essence of private property when the working robots can already fulfill all the needs of the humanity ? 2- What's the essence of political power where nobody feels anymore t…

>3- What will be the safeguard to prevent a maleficient/egoist minds to lock the access to all that abundancy ? That's quite philosophical question as humanity never experienced that kind of pure evil mindset. Every dictatorship, slavery, oppression were always driven by the context of competition towards the control over a limited economic resources.

The best safeguard against someone keeping AI for themselves would be to distribute the knowledge and equipment as widely as possible, and to build open alternatives where ones don't already exist. As the Cypherpunk FAQ tells us, the best way to secure digital rights is through technological solutions.

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

#108
post #102
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

True, but there are different levels/types of slavery.

If that's the definition of slavery you're using, do you feel that there is anybody who is not some level of enslaved? Honestly asking.

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

#109
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but there are different levels/types of slavery.

If that's the definition of slavery you're using, do you feel that there is anybody who is not some level of enslaved? Honestly asking.

To define slavery first we would need to define freedom. I think you can agree with me that everyone defines freedom differently. For a person born into slavery, freedom will have a different meaning than for a person that never knew slavery, hunger or misery. I know that this is really a non-answer, but honestly I don't feel qualified to even attempt to define what slavery is and what it isn't.
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