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Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

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Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#31

Post by FLUX-YOU »

s_kilk wrote: post #29
thriftwy wrote: post #2

I think that soon it will be considered a bad practice to possess a skill or to use some knowledge for decisions.. If you have learned to do something, you will proceed by teaching a machine learning system that. And then you will use that, and not your internal knowledge. The reason will be cited as follows: If you know something, this introduces bus factor. People can't get in your head to validate if you're applyi…

This would effectively freeze all development and leave us collectively stuck at the current level of expertise. If every doctor trains an ML algo, then forgets how to be a doctor, then medicine stops dead at that level.

>If every doctor trains an ML algo, then forgets how to be a doctor, then medicine stops dead at that level.

It's very rare that technology becomes ubiquitous and free very quickly. You will still need doctors in poor areas, destitute countries, and in the military.

Still, education and society would likely optimize for getting people to the edge of knowledge more quickly if ML algos truly took over a field like medicine.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#32

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

Jobs have been made obsolete many times over. There are fewer blacksmiths than there used to be when a horse was a primary method of transportation. Manufacturing jobs declined during globalization/offshoring during the eighties. Did knowledge work take the place of those manufacturing jobs? Would the employment numbers look different if VisiCalc hadn't come along?

The questions are: what do the population numbers look like that are impacted by these changes in job-type demand? How many blacksmiths were many obsolete by the car? How many manufacturing jobs were removed from the pool by moving to offshore manufacturing? How many manufacturing/warehouse/etc. jobs will be replaced by automation?

The last question is probably the hardest to answer, because we don't know yet. It depends on the evolution of the sensors (solid state LIDAR), other hardware, and automation methods.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#33

Post by mholmes680 »

s_kilk wrote: post #29
thriftwy wrote: post #2

I think that soon it will be considered a bad practice to possess a skill or to use some knowledge for decisions.. If you have learned to do something, you will proceed by teaching a machine learning system that. And then you will use that, and not your internal knowledge. The reason will be cited as follows: If you know something, this introduces bus factor. People can't get in your head to validate if you're applyi…

This would effectively freeze all development and leave us collectively stuck at the current level of expertise. If every doctor trains an ML algo, then forgets how to be a doctor, then medicine stops dead at that level.

i dunno... i just read about alphago zero. Only needed to teach it the rules of the game, and it thrashed the current level of cumulative human expertise (alpha go) 100-0 matches, which had just thrashed a single human the year before.

This seems like its happening at some hedge funds as well for stock picking.

I guess the closed system of the game rules is more manageable than all of medicine, but... I can't agree with "stuck as the current level of expertise".

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#35

Post by stefie10 »

lubesGordi wrote: post #34

Every single technological advancement relieves someone of work. This allows people to put their money towards things that they would rather put money towards, creating more jobs there. This makes the world a better place.

I agree, but technical advancements can also lead to a transfer of wealth from worker to capital owner. For example, there are roughly two million long-haul truck drivers in the US today. When we have self-driving trucks, they will lose their jobs. It's not a very fun job, and self-driving trucks will be better and safer. But it will also transfer wealth from the worker to the capital owner.

It may also create other jobs etc., but clearly the wealth transfer is one part of the effect. I think that as a result it is important to pursue social policies to mitigate the disruption experienced by displaced workers, and to spread the benefit of the technology to a larger fraction of society.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#36

Post by fenwick67 »

stefie10 wrote: post #24
fenwick67 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much harder to ask an algorithm about it's reasoning than a person's. "Joe, why did you fire Carla?" "She was late to work every other day and spent all day on her phone" "HR-bot 5000, why did you fire Carla?" "Weights indices 59738, 837, and 28836 added to over 0.67, yielding a score of only .85, which is below the firing threshold" Certainly you could look at the input data and try to convince a jury that her…

We cannot do this today, but this capability, of using language, is one we are actively working towards. Eventually, you can imagine an AI that can engage in a dialog like this one, in words. For example, see the DARPA Explainable AI program: https://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-intelli... .

Great link, thanks. These are the kind of systems that will really allow AI to take off.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#37

Post by stefie10 »

colemannugent wrote: post #30
boundring wrote: post #16

The article is focused on robotic automation of menial tasks, primarily in industrial settings (factories, warehouses), not automation of judgements which could be subject to bias... Thriftwy raises an interesting point, speculatively, but there's little bias to be found in supply logistics or assembly of parts. Marginally touched upon in the article was the displacement of lower-class workers. Is expansion of automa…

I don't think that increased automation will necessarily kill jobs. When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that could triple the labor of a slave, and the number of slaves increased keep the machines fed. For a more modern analogy, AWS enables one engineer to deploy machines at let's say 100 times the speed of an engineer doing it all manually. If you business scales with the number of deployed machines, each addit…

I think that's definitely true, in terms of net jobs. (But probably not always true.) However it will lead to disruption - the old jobs won't be the same as the new jobs. This disruption is potentially harmful to the people doing the old jobs. Additionally, most of the benefit of the cotton gin went to the slave owners, not the slaves, even though the slaves still had jobs. Hopefully we can do better this time!

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#38

Post by ryandrake »

indigochill wrote: post #23
stefie10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started working in robotics because I wanted to empower people and make the world a better place. But what I have started to appreciate is that increasing automation is by default a transfer of wealth from labor to capital owners. The two million long-haul truck drivers who are going to be replaced by self-driving trucks are going to lose income; the owners of the self-driving trucks are going to capture that wealt…

Although I agree automation necessarily moves wealth from labor to capital sources, I think an underappreciated concept by those concerned about automation is how increased productivity at least historically has benefited the overall economy. The industrial revolution went a long way towards advancing economic inequality, but had it not happened we collectively wouldn't enjoy anywhere near the quality of life we now…

Problem is: Tell that to the people losing their jobs. "Sorry you have to choose between medication and rent now. But hey, the overall economy is doing great so you should feel happy!" This idea that a rising overall economy benefits everyone is a lie told by the smaller number of people who it actually benefits.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#39

Post by Danihan »

goatlover wrote: post #25
Danihan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already is. For instance, let's say you pull up to a red light and the intesection is empty. No cars, no pedestrians. Common sense tells you to just run the light, there is no reason not to. But it's illegal for a human to use their own judgement to do this, and the instructions of the red light have to be followed regardless.

If there is no camera and no police, you can run treat the light as a stoplight. Just be safe about it. By can, I mean that a human being can choose to do so. Maybe smart cars in the future won't allow the driver to make that decision. But nothing forces us to always obey traffic laws right now.

Enforcement is just a technicality.

Re: Welcoming Our New Robotic Overlords

#40

Post by L_Rahman »

lubesGordi wrote: post #34

Every single technological advancement relieves someone of work. This allows people to put their money towards things that they would rather put money towards, creating more jobs there. This makes the world a better place.

Is there a well-cited 1200-1800 word categorical debunking of trickle down economics somewhere on the internet?

Please tell me so that I can bookmark it and paste when I see comments like this on the internet.

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