Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pewinternet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 155 posts

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

#61

Post by afterburner »

jhartmann wrote: post #40
afterburner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you have heard from supposedly impartial and expert sources may in fact be wrong.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/12/experts-misleading-peopl...

It doesn't matter, I don't have to convince you. Renewable prices are already dropping so much such that they are coming regardless (can't say that about nuclear can you? unless you lie about the budget of course); only Koch-like attempts to oppose it like punitive fees for solar panels can do any damage.

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

#62

Post by aivosha »

Afforess wrote: post #49
aivosha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the video, the analogy between horses loosing out to cars and humans loosing out to AI is false. Humans are the ones building the AI. Horses however did not build the cars. Its a very important distinction we are not at a liberty to dismiss.

Analogies are not meant to be perfect representations of an argument, but rather a facsimile that helps the reader compare and contrast. Your nitpick is therefore irrelevant.

I did not say the analogy is not representative. I said its wrong. Now if horses were building cars and being worried about their future, I'd say fine. But its not the case. Here horses are not in the same position at all as humans. So its not helping to "compare and contrast", its building up a wrong mindset, wrong premise.

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

#63

Post by dang »

3rd3 wrote: post #24
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...

That video was actually briefly on the HN front page. I’m still wondering why some people apparently flagged so that it was quickly relegated to page 3 or so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172461

No one flagged it.

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

#64

Post by Chronic29 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #59
twobits wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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) futu…

> 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. I doubt it is either of those. People can't go against billions, not without significant casualties, and not any time soon. I fear what the solution might be... If you are rich you might be more interested in culling number of those unneeded serfs…

Why not? The Chinese government exterminates Muslims in China (the problem) and do a fantastic job not telling the world about it.

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

#65

Post by evv »

aivosha wrote: post #42
robertfw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recommend this video highly enough - it does a great job of showing the science fact instead of contemplating science fiction, illustrating how technology that we have in development NOW is going to impact our economy. I have a feeling that this is an issue is going to creep up on us quickly, and I worry that our governments have proven themselves completely incapable of driving the discussion and making the…

In the video, the analogy between horses loosing out to cars and humans loosing out to AI is false. Humans are the ones building the AI. Horses however did not build the cars. Its a very important distinction we are not at a liberty to dismiss.

You're missing something. Horse-like animals actually did develop cars. They only had to evolve into humans and build up a technological base before they could do it.

Over a very long period of time, animals developed cars. Now that same development process is remarkably faster, and robots are being developed. The horse analogy is perfectly valid.

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

#66

Post by eromni69 »

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 is renewable. Every time there is a supernova a whole solar system loaded with Thorium is recreated!

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

#67

Post by seanflyon »

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #32
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 movin…

If labor is effectively free (because robots don't get paid) then I don't think that the products of that labor would be particularly scarce. Even material costs are primarily the labor cost to extract or recycle a material.

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

#68

Post by eromni69 »

neutronicus wrote: post #34
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.

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

Molten Salt Reactors are cheaper. They do not need a pressure vessel or a huge containment structure. They can fit in a shipping container. BTW red herring is delicious!

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

#69

Post by Siecje »

furyofantares wrote: post #41
robertfw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recommend this video highly enough - it does a great job of showing the science fact instead of contemplating science fiction, illustrating how technology that we have in development NOW is going to impact our economy. I have a feeling that this is an issue is going to creep up on us quickly, and I worry that our governments have proven themselves completely incapable of driving the discussion and making the…

I don't understand why the video goes through the history of technology reducing the need for types of labor and doesn't acknowledge that we keep thinking of new things to do. The closest he comes to making an argument that we won't keep making new jobs is that we didn't keep making new jobs _for horses_ which seems to me like arguing that we didn't keep making new jobs for spears and hammers and pencils. I have conc…

In the video he says that the new jobs we have created do not make up a significant portion of all jobs.

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

#70

Post by evv »

furyofantares wrote: post #54
Afforess wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGP Grey went through the analogy of horses and the history of technology to emphasize the line of thinking that the invention of new technology will lead to the creation of new jobs is a fallacy and false. In the past, new technological changes lead to the demise of horses. There were no "new" jobs that horses could fulfill. So it will be with humans.

Horses, to my understanding, do not have a seemingly insatiable desire for novelty and to create a new world. Horses have never created their own jobs using their own ingenuity. We do not as a society place value on the employment rate of horses. Our economy does not depend on horses purchasing goods and services. Or social structure does not depend on horses feeling a sense of meaning in their lives. We didn't react…

> Horses, to my understanding, do not have a seemingly insatiable desire for novelty and to create a new world.

Dark as it may seem, many people would say the same about most human consumers in this country. Looking at the most successful creations in the past century, most are made by corporations. While people have been spearheading those efforts so far, the whole novel creation process would be automated if and when it can be. (The "if" in this case is weather or not you believe in "the singularity")

> We do not as a society place value on the employment rate of horses.

.. but a society of horses sure would. We, as a society of humans, are worried about the future of human jobs. Our human society and social structure is in for one hell of a shock, but the world will move on.

> Our economy does not depend on horses purchasing goods and services.

And our economy barely relies on humans anymore. As long as there is something with money to spend, the economy doesn't really care. Look at the banking industry. Look at all these B2B partnerships.. who cares about humans in those relationships? Robots are getting better and better at deciding how to spend money.

Is the analogy really that silly? I love it because it helps wake people up to the reality we live in: we are the horses in this new age, growing ever more irrelevant. The world economy couldn't care less about humans.

This is getting depressing. I'm gonna go listen to "Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine...

Post reply on HN