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Just own the damn robots

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Re: Just own the damn robots

#81

Post by philipkglass »

kmicklas wrote: post #76
philipkglass wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duplicate the means of production. If we really end up in a world where robots make the products and robots make the robots, then the means of production are information products that can be copied like software. (And there will be open source robots too, but copying without permission is the fallback position if commercial robots are too patent-encumbered to reimplement by legal means.) I wouldn't steal a car... but…

This is an interesting line of thought. The spread of capitalism was fueled by the new technology of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps the next mode of production will be fueled by this 'Internet/Computer/Robot/AI Revolution'. Maybe the important change is this "trivially scalable output irrespective of capital" property, but no one really seems to know what this will lead to.

It seems like it could lead to a world of abundance for everyone. One potentially severe complication: if machines can make anything there's a blueprint for, they can also make all manner of weapons. What if the occasional unpredictable spree killer could fab up a crude cruise missile full of nerve gas instead of buying a bunch of rifles? Or even what if someone fabs a throng of standard tree-trimming robots and reprograms them to trim the limbs off humans instead?

Most people aren't willing to kill other people. In a world of abundance, I expect that even fewer will be willing. But the few killers who remain could have vastly amplified powers of destruction. I don't like how Marshall Brain's Manna solved the violence problem, but I haven't got any great answers of my own.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#82

Post by vkou »

philipkglass wrote: post #75
germinalphrase wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, do the 10% believe that they are a static group deserving of persistent participation in the "working class" - or is this a competitive and fluid group in which the children of the 90% may move into/out of as their skills/ability apply? Which is to ask - is it worth maintaining a 90% at all or should we 'solve that problem'?

When even a small percentage of the rich oppose an extermination program for the bottom 90%, it turns a plan for tidy mass murder into chaotic war with dangerous risks to even the richest. That's why I don't put much weight on the "rich exterminate the unneeded poor" scenario, as outlined in Peter Frase's "B" scenario from Four Futures .

The more likely outcome of a true post-scarcity society is the 90% will be house servants for the 10%.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#83

Post by anigbrowl »

richk449 wrote: post #69
anigbrowl wrote: post #22

Why not just seize the means of production? Private (real) property is ultimately rooted in the theft of the commons. This has historically been justified using two assertions: that people don't value what they don't own, and that nobody does anything except for profit. Both are highly questionable, yet when counterexamples are offered they are generally dismissed as 'the exception that proves the rule' or some equal…

> Why not just seize the means of production? I wonder if anyone has tried that before. I guess I will go read a history book and find out.

I could say exactly the same thing about capitalism's boom & bust cycles or the mounting problems of environmental externalities.

You might eb surprised by the relatively steady rate of economic growth in the former Soviet bloc, contrary to popular stereotypes of a collapsing economy. The wiki article below is an OK summary as a) I don't want to demand you read a long paper on the subject, and b) I definitely don't want to advocates for the authoritarian central planning approach that prevailed under Stalin and for decades afterwards, at tremendous cost to human life, liberty, and dignity. Lefty types like myself often refer to that dreadful approach as state capitalism.

I cite it here to suggest that slow & steady growth might be better than highly disruptive unstable maximum growth. Of course, graphs of aggregate or per-capita GDP suffer from inaccuracy in that they conceal the distribution of economic benefits; as we know you can have a country that's very rich on paper and still has catastrophic poverty problems when you dig farther down into the data. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to easily synthesize data on distribution, economic mobility, the value of public goods, and so forth within a simple metric. Perhaps using multiples of the median rather than currency units would be a better yardstick, but I'm not an econometrist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union

Re: Just own the damn robots

#84

Post by javajosh »

A certain amount of compute capacity should be given with citizenship to each individual. It is fixed. You get to use that capacity however you want: some on your phone, some on your laptop. If you want to run an internet business that uses a lot of compute capacity, then you'll need to rent it from other individuals and consolidate it under your control.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#85

Post by anigbrowl »

s73ver_ wrote: post #66
taberiand wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you'll be shot, probably by a robot.

But eventually, the robots, unable to cope with what they've got to do, will turn to robot drugs, robot alcohol, and other robot-destructive behaviors to escape.

That's funny, but insofar as they need to be truly adaptive they're subject to subversion. See James Cameron's in-depth studies of the halting problem as applied to the psychodynamics of biopollutant elimination.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#86

Post by Chathamization »

matthewbauer wrote: post #79

Interesting article but I think the premise that workers are buying tech stocks because they fear automation is incorrect. Gallup found 13% of Americans thought that their jobs would soon be replaced by automation[1]. In fact you usually find more people worried about immigration than automation[2]. Maybe people /should/ be more concerned about automation but they just aren’t right now. [1]: http://news.gallup.com/po…

> Maybe people /should/ be more concerned about automation but they just aren’t right now.

Or maybe people should be less concerned about it. The rate of automation/productivity growth has actually been pretty low over the last decade[1], some of the slowest in the past 70 years.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

Re: Just own the damn robots

#87

Post by georgeecollins »

arichard123 wrote: post #21

I just don't buy it. I understand I'm in a minority, so let me indulge myself and explain, for a moment, why I think AI / Robots are nothing to worry about. My claim is: Robots will not replace humans in all jobs. Further, it's more than because of Human preference, I think that Robots will lack cognitive abilities that we have. My expectation is that in each area where they are deficient then they may well become a…

It's like they say, Watson can beat any human at Jeopardy. But Watson plus a human can beat any human and Watson by itself.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#88

Post by anigbrowl »

chopin wrote: post #41
anigbrowl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works OK as a deterrent against (some) individuals, but there are numerous historical examples of its failure to scale.

There also numerous examples of failed mass uprisings. If you can throw enough robots at the problem, the 0.1% would have nothing to fear.

That's a big if, given the vast range of subversive strategies available.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#89

Post by Chathamization »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #33
arichard123 wrote: post #21

I just don't buy it. I understand I'm in a minority, so let me indulge myself and explain, for a moment, why I think AI / Robots are nothing to worry about. My claim is: Robots will not replace humans in all jobs. Further, it's more than because of Human preference, I think that Robots will lack cognitive abilities that we have. My expectation is that in each area where they are deficient then they may well become a…

It was some article here on HN a while back that framed this much better for me. It's NOT that Robots are going to take all the jobs, it's that automation and productivity advances are going to reduce the people necessary by a drastic degree. There's lots of stats like Ikea factories making 17x the bookcases they did in 1985 but with the same number of staff. But even in our technical and development niche, look at s…

> It's NOT that Robots are going to take all the jobs, it's that automation and productivity advances are going to reduce the people necessary by a drastic degree.

That's been happening for hundreds of years. It's actually going more slowly now - productivity growth is some of the slowest that we've seen over the past 70 years[1].

It seems more likely that flashy tech (like articles about self driving cars and drone delivery) helped people believe a false narrative about the high unemployment that followed the financial crisis. It was also a narrative that exempted the political leadership - hey, we can't do anything to fix things, it's just a brave new world.

But the numbers are show that the theory is bunk. Not just the productivity numbers I mentioned, but also the employment participation rate[2].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

Re: Just own the damn robots

#90

Post by enraged_camel »

arichard123 wrote: post #21

I just don't buy it. I understand I'm in a minority, so let me indulge myself and explain, for a moment, why I think AI / Robots are nothing to worry about. My claim is: Robots will not replace humans in all jobs. Further, it's more than because of Human preference, I think that Robots will lack cognitive abilities that we have. My expectation is that in each area where they are deficient then they may well become a…

>>1) Cultural concerns. e.g. Appropriate imagery in advertising.

This seems to assume advertising will continue to be aimed at humans. Why would it be? Why would purchasing stuff not be done by AIs in the future as well? In that scenario, things like culture would become irrelevant, as marketing AIs would advertise products/services to purchasing AIs.

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