On a related note, I AM losing a bit of the joy of programming, because I let LLMs generate increasingly greater amounts of it. Who knew that previously writing boilerplate code secretly has made me happier..
100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
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Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#12The machines will have owners; likely, these owners will be very few due to the concentration of wealth that they will have accumulated by the time we reach full automation. So, probably a guy will own all the agricultural automation, another one the warehouse automation, another one the software, etc. Then there will also be the resource owners (probably states or big landlords). Since resources are finite (land, mi…
Or we just rob the resource owners and burn the automation.
Or tax their capital with income redistribution purposes, as we are already doing with more down to earth means of production.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#13I really can’t wait. I have so many side projects I need to finish and my day job keeps interfering with them.
I worry that day jobs are useful far beyond money for side projects. You do what you don't want all day, but then you are able to feel happy enough to do great work when you go back home to do what you really want.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#14Previous discussion (Feb 2015, 90 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9065490
Really illuminating. Reading the comments, I can't help but think how bad most of us are at predicting the future. While the OP's world might still be somewhat far away, it doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched now as it would have seemed in 2013.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#15With Folded Hands (1947) by Jack Williamson is my favourite vision of such a future I've ever read. From the Dad losing his job to the kids giving up violin because they can't compete with their Humanoid "servants" it captures the sense of futility very well.
I think history can be read as a history of human obsolescence. Even the powerful people who thought their values and ideas were important thrown on the scrap heap eventually like everyone else.
Luck is living a whole life without experiencing it personally.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#16Time flies. I suppose the difference between now and 2013 are LLMs, which did seem to trigger renewed interest in robotics and related branches of knowledge. That said, if history is any indicator, it will not go well.
Please elaborate
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#17The machines will have owners; likely, these owners will be very few due to the concentration of wealth that they will have accumulated by the time we reach full automation. So, probably a guy will own all the agricultural automation, another one the warehouse automation, another one the software, etc. Then there will also be the resource owners (probably states or big landlords). Since resources are finite (land, mi…
I think there would be open-source machine variants that many people could own and modify. As population growth is slowing, finite resources should hopefully have a better and wider distribution among people as they would not be constraints.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#18On a related note, I AM losing a bit of the joy of programming, because I let LLMs generate increasingly greater amounts of it. Who knew that previously writing boilerplate code secretly has made me happier..
Maybe the key is to write more complex projects that you normally would.
Recently, I wanted to learn a new language. I tried to pick some simple projects to start with (e.g. write a compression algorithm, a basic 3D renderer, a lambda calculus interpreter and so on). I realized that LLM could do the work for me and lost my motivation.
But maybe, I could try to write something much harder and use the LLM to help me.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#19Previous discussion (Feb 2015, 90 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9065490
Really illuminating. Reading the comments, I can't help but think how bad most of us are at predicting the future. While the OP's world might still be somewhat far away, it doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched now as it would have seemed in 2013.
humanity being out-of-work is the premise of Marx's writings and we are not closer to it now than those 170 years ago.
Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
#20> 100% Unemployment
This is a prediction that has been made for a long time but has never been realized.
Also with the end of abundant energy, our descendants may have to work much harder than us.