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AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

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Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#31

Post by Ygg2 »

zokier wrote: post #27
e0m wrote: post #3

CGP Grey recently put out a video along very similar lines. Worth 15 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&list=UU2C_jShtL7...

I found it surprisingly shallow in that it didn't really delve into post-scarcity economics. With stuff like basic income or negative taxing the loss of jobs will not look as severe societally.

In all honesty, it would be a really bad video if it included it. Because we have no knowledge what post-scarcity economics will look like.

At best he could write about his ideal of an utopia or his vision of a dystopia.

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#32

Post by Homunculiheaded »

atemerev wrote: post #2

Of course, there will be less and less "jobs" in the future. But that's OK. The population growth is already stopping. Productivity will rise to the new heights. Society will adapt — first, by introducing, say, 4-hour work days, then by totally eliminating the concept of a "job" — everyone will be either a temp staffer, or a business founder (or an artisan — arts and crafts will be more valuable than ever). We are mo…

"post-scarcity" is an illusion presented to people living at the very top of the economic pyramid. I'm sure most HNers are in the top 90th percentile of US household income on their own, living in a world mostly surrounded by other affluent individuals working in a similar field, all in jobs with increasingly flexible work hours, better benefits and nearly unlimited job prospects.

The world only looks like it's moving towards post-scarcity because the resources consumed and waste produced have been nearly completely outsourced away, and the pangs of the labor issues created by automation are happening somewhere else.

Post-scarcity is not an issue of 'productivity' but of resource use. As Jevons paradox [0] points out the more efficiently we use resources the more of them we tend to use. Looking merely at productivity and efficiency without looking at resource use and waste production gives a wildly incomplete picture of "post-scarcity". What I see is that the world is increasingly separating into a small sub-population that is presented the illusion of post-scarcity and a another, growing, subset that is feeling the effects of scarcity required to maintain that illusion.

When I see data to support the argument that resource use and waste production are plummeting, then I'll believe in narratives about post-scarcity.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#33

Post by Ygg2 »

atemerev wrote: post #15
protonfish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person? The only things that have ever had a clear, direct affect in quality of life of the masses (both positive and negative) are political.

> When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person? Like, every time? Compare the average worker of today with average worker of 100 years ago.

> Like, every time?

A chicken sees man coming to feed it, so it jumps out in front of him awaiting food. Then one day, man comes with an axe, and chicken still jumps in front of him expecting food. The end.

I.e. Correlation doesn't imply causation etc.

Imagine having at your disposal perfectly amoral and lethal robotics force. One that only exists to protect you and exterminate any threat to you. What stops the future rich man from treating a fellow man like a dog? Right now, the police might rebel against you if you go too far.

I'd be interested to look at average worker today and future where inequality is super rampant. In that society, I think a worker from 100 years ago would compare similarly to a worker from 100 years in such future.

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#34

Post by neutronicus »

atemerev wrote: post #13
Joeri wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt we're going post-scarcity any time soon though. We don't have any of the technologies that form the foundation of a post-scarcity society: abundant renewable energy, fully automated just-in-time production of nearly all goods and materials, extremely low cost delivery of goods to the home and/or business, and the intelligent software that ties it all together. Some of those things are close, others, not so mu…

> abundant renewable energy We have enough uranium and thorium for millions of years with breeder cycle. Even if not renewable, who cares? And it's quite ecological, compared to burning oil products. The rest is quite close.

It's the cost of building new plants that dominates the cost of nuclear energy, though. Cheap fuel is honestly a red herring.

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#35

Post by Dewie »

hvs wrote: post #17
JeremyReimer wrote: post #9

If a panel of experts are evenly split on their opinions about the future of jobs, it seems to me that nobody really knows what is going to happen. It's one thing to point to how historically new technology created new jobs to replace those it displaced, but I get the feeling that this time it might be very different. All the rules go out the window when technological acceleration reaches a certain point. I'm not say…

Peoples' wants and desires are infinite. As long as there are things to desire, there will be jobs to do.

Is there any convincing data on this point? I know that it was an economist that uttered this theory, so I'll assume good faith when it comes to research effort or at least diligent argumentation on the behalf of this statement. But without anything to back it up, it just comes off as something it's proponents take for granted as a truism.

"Consumerism" (which goes beyond "stuff" and materialism, at least here) has been criticized by many in the western world. Even just leaving aside the argument that involves a finite planet sustaining ever-more needs and desires, I'm not convinced that the average human's needs and desires are infinite in any practical sense. It might be that "more is more", but I also suspect a sharp decline due to diminishing returns as one gets ever more needs fulfilled. How much better does spending 1,000 million on yourself feel than spending 100 million on yourself? Significantly better? I guess we could theoretically get to the point where everyone takes what is in today's currency billion-dollars worth of vacations by going on trips 'round the Solar System. But at some point, maybe before we're at the point of the Solar System joyrides, it just might not seem so exciting any more (travelling to the red wasteland of Mars might not be so exotic and exciting as it is today when a lot of people can and have already done it).

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#36

Post by jbattle »

afterburner wrote: post #19
atemerev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abundant renewable energy We have enough uranium and thorium for millions of years with breeder cycle. Even if not renewable, who cares? And it's quite ecological, compared to burning oil products. The rest is quite close.

Renewables are basically already viable, despite what its opponents have been trying to say. It's already more competitive than natural gas in some places, and the next 5 years will be crossing many other such thresholds.

Is that true even if you normalize subsidies between the different forms of production/transportation/use?

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#37

Post by sharemywin »

atemerev wrote: post #15
protonfish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person? The only things that have ever had a clear, direct affect in quality of life of the masses (both positive and negative) are political.

> When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person? Like, every time? Compare the average worker of today with average worker of 100 years ago.

world wide or just US. since alot of the work from 100 years ago got outsourced with the polution to parts of the world that don't regulated it as much.

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#38

Post by digitalengineer »

"Race against the Machine" is actually a good book about the topic: "In Race Against the Machine, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee present a very different explanation. Drawing on research by their team at the Center for Digital Business, they show that there's been no stagnation in technology -- in fact, the digital revolution is accelerating.

"...digital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills that used to belong to humans alone. This phenomenon is both broad and deep, and has profound economic implications. Many of these implications are positive; digital innovation increases productivity, reduces prices (sometimes to zero), and grows the overall economic pie."

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-...

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#39

Post by twobits »

atemerev wrote: post #2

Of course, there will be less and less "jobs" in the future. But that's OK. The population growth is already stopping. Productivity will rise to the new heights. Society will adapt — first, by introducing, say, 4-hour work days, then by totally eliminating the concept of a "job" — everyone will be either a temp staffer, or a business founder (or an artisan — arts and crafts will be more valuable than ever). We are mo…

"We are moving to post-scarcity, and the future is bright."

If you are the king, why do you need to keep those billions of loud, dirty, polluting, dangerous, depleting the natural resources, and now UNNEEDED serfs around? When you could gain by exploiting them, great. Someone had to do the hard work. But now / soon, they have nothing to offer, besides problems. Problems, are to be ..exterminated.

Imo, the (near) future, is either paradise, or total hell. Nothing in between. And history isn't offering reasons to be optimistic.

(PS: Yes, I totally understand that the above stands on the pov that there are some "kings", and we are the "serfs". It's a pov that's easy to dismiss. Personally, I don't.)

Re: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf]

#40

Post by jhartmann »

afterburner wrote: post #19
atemerev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abundant renewable energy We have enough uranium and thorium for millions of years with breeder cycle. Even if not renewable, who cares? And it's quite ecological, compared to burning oil products. The rest is quite close.

Renewables are basically already viable, despite what its opponents have been trying to say. It's already more competitive than natural gas in some places, and the next 5 years will be crossing many other such thresholds.

Renewables are not already viable, they are never going to be viable but for a small portion of our energy needs. Because Physics. They just don't have enough concentrated energy. Take solar for example, take a look at http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml, In the UK solar basically works out to 100 watts per square meter on average. Somewhere really nice in the American Sotuhwest is maybe like 400 watts per square meter. At 25% efficiency, to equal the baseline load of a 1 GW nuclear power plant, you need something like 7.7 square miles of panel area when you factor in the need to capture enough sun during the day and store it for the night. You need to also have a high voltage DC grid to ship the electricity from the Desert to where we need it, and much better storage systems to hold the load for the night. Basically Solar is never going to work for baseline load, and to top it all off photovoltaics are dirty as hell to make. Wind is even more bad (There was a study that said you needed 270 square miles of land to generate 1 GW reliably), and hydroelectric is limited in where we can deploy it. Nuclear is exactly what we need, renewables just can't be anything but a small part of the solution considering our power usage is increasing not decreasing.
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