100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over • Hacker News Board

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#61

Post by redeemer » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:33 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

redeemer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you automate away your non-tech co-worker ... will he get the bonus? Yes, and you get nothing. It's fair; just don't automate away other people's jobs, automate away your own. > If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Yes, 100% of the bonus. It's not a choice, you must leave. I still think that's fair. > If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself…

Ok, so how about when you're an accountant? Now your employer has a strong incentive to pay someone extra to eliminate you, and you have no way of automating yourself because you don't know squat about programming. That's the kind of situation that needs to be handled.

My reply would be that if a programmer can out-account you as an accountant, then you've failed as an accountant; you need to look for another job or learn the necessary skills like programming.

Of course this does mean a lot of people out of jobs, which is the crux of the article, but I don't think it's a fault or weak link in this employment model.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#62

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:34 AM UTC

cranklin wrote: post #14

Too much credit given to "robots". I see this coming from Hollywood, not Hacker News.

Google has cars that are about to kill the entire transportation industry. Amazon already reduced the workers in some of its warehouses to biomechanical grabbing hands; all higher-order functions are performed by robots. No, I don't think we're giving too much credit to robots.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#63

Post by chongli » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:35 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

craigyk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially a stand-in for workers "owning the means of production". Congrats, you are now a marxist (dirty commie according to some).

That's why I hate political labels. What do you mean by saying "he's a marxist"? Does subscribing to one of Karl's ideas require automatically subscribing to every other? I know you meant this as a joke, but I want to emphasize a general point - one of the things that totally dumb down conversations about economy is people grouping ideas under labels like "communist" or "libertarian" or whatever and evaluating them i…

All of Marx's other ideas naturally follow from the one: who should own the means of production?

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#64

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:36 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

redeemer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you automate away your non-tech co-worker ... will he get the bonus? Yes, and you get nothing. It's fair; just don't automate away other people's jobs, automate away your own. > If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Yes, 100% of the bonus. It's not a choice, you must leave. I still think that's fair. > If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself…

Ok, so how about when you're an accountant? Now your employer has a strong incentive to pay someone extra to eliminate you, and you have no way of automating yourself because you don't know squat about programming. That's the kind of situation that needs to be handled.

> and you have no way of automating yourself because you don't know squat about programming.

Automating existing work is more than just programming; a big part of it is expertise provided by people knowledgeable about the existing workflow. None of the projects I've been on that involved automating existing work involved only programmers and no one with experience doing the work.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#65

Post by craigyk » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:36 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

craigyk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially a stand-in for workers "owning the means of production". Congrats, you are now a marxist (dirty commie according to some).

That's why I hate political labels. What do you mean by saying "he's a marxist"? Does subscribing to one of Karl's ideas require automatically subscribing to every other? I know you meant this as a joke, but I want to emphasize a general point - one of the things that totally dumb down conversations about economy is people grouping ideas under labels like "communist" or "libertarian" or whatever and evaluating them i…

To be a bit contrarian though... there is a useful aspect associated with using labels, even in political/economic discussions, in a way that is similar to ascribing names to things called "design patterns" so that one can communicate concepts more tersely.

If done in good faith, I think it's legitimate to start with approximate labels, like "libertarian", and the arguing parties can then proceed to make their position clearer if necessary. Hopefully, this saves time.

Also, I think it's fair to describe someone that believes in the importance of "workers should own the means of production" as a marxist (at least it's more accurate than socialist or communist).

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#66

Post by nkozyra » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:36 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

norswap wrote: post #38

> Instead, my job will be outsourced to a datacenter. Everything I do professionally, from reading and giving feedback on specs to estimating development schedules to architecting and typing in the code and writing unit tests to reviewing others' code, every one of these things will be subject to automation. We can't do it now, of course, not at any price. The whole thing derives from these flawed premises. Machines…

First of all, > Machines are incredibly dumb. Even these machine-learning wizz-things. They can do statistics, inferences, correlations. Do you think human brain does something more? All we can do is statistics, inferences and correlations, and we do it poorly. Moreover, there is an even bigger problem than 100% automation of everything - namely, the automation of 50% of jobs. What are we going to do with half of the…

At present the only difference is the human brain is far more malleable and adaptable than is a machine. Our most flexible AI is generally based on supervised learning. That still requires human interpretation and verification to work properly.

I think you can also state that machines generally lack the ability to discern expansive context unless explicitly trained to do so.

Granted, it will happen. True AI requires these things. At present all ML needs a push from a human to become more "intelligent."

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#67

Post by hodwik » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:39 AM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #53

hodwik wrote: post #47

The human mind, while having less data storage, and being drastically slower for some types of problems, will stay significantly faster than computers at other types of problems. We merely must learn to better teach those brains (matrix upload?), extend them (artificial memory enhancements and built in calculators) and utilize them for the problem sets they excel at.

> The human mind ... will stay significantly faster than computers at other types of problems This is controversial. Semantic tagging of photographs used to be something that was done much better by the human brain, but all of a sudden it seems like computers are catching up fast. I hesitate to say there's any one domain that we won't be able to tackle algorithmically/via machine learning in some way. > extend them (…

Absolutely, technology of some kind will be able to replicate all human domains of intelligence at some distant point in the future, but our own minds will be continually extended (with lower and lower latency, and increasingly reliable interfaces).

The question becomes moot as humans and machine coalesce.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#68

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:40 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #64

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so how about when you're an accountant? Now your employer has a strong incentive to pay someone extra to eliminate you, and you have no way of automating yourself because you don't know squat about programming. That's the kind of situation that needs to be handled.

> and you have no way of automating yourself because you don't know squat about programming. Automating existing work is more than just programming; a big part of it is expertise provided by people knowledgeable about the existing workflow. None of the projects I've been on that involved automating existing work involved only programmers and no one with experience doing the work.

Yes, I know, and I appreciated that fact in the post upthread. The point here is, if you go with the suggestion of 'redemeer that "if you get automated away, you get 0", said accountant will have no incentive to help with the automating, and every incentive to make it as hard as possible - which I think is not the result we want to have. To get a happy ending for everyone, we need coordination, not competition.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#69

Post by DonnyV » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:43 AM UTC

oconnore wrote: post #42

norswap wrote: post #38

> Instead, my job will be outsourced to a datacenter. Everything I do professionally, from reading and giving feedback on specs to estimating development schedules to architecting and typing in the code and writing unit tests to reviewing others' code, every one of these things will be subject to automation. We can't do it now, of course, not at any price. The whole thing derives from these flawed premises. Machines…

Most people are paid to drive trucks, not solve novel problems or understand subtle linguistic constructs. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-...

Exactly and those jobs will be automated in about 5 to 10 year's. We as a society are not prepared for that.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over

#70

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Feb 18, 2015, 12:43 AM UTC

craigyk wrote: post #65

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I hate political labels. What do you mean by saying "he's a marxist"? Does subscribing to one of Karl's ideas require automatically subscribing to every other? I know you meant this as a joke, but I want to emphasize a general point - one of the things that totally dumb down conversations about economy is people grouping ideas under labels like "communist" or "libertarian" or whatever and evaluating them i…

To be a bit contrarian though... there is a useful aspect associated with using labels, even in political/economic discussions, in a way that is similar to ascribing names to things called "design patterns" so that one can communicate concepts more tersely. If done in good faith, I think it's legitimate to start with approximate labels, like "libertarian", and the arguing parties can then proceed to make their positi…

If done in good faith is the key though. I'm complaining because I've seen too many discussions derailed by people assigning labels to each other and then calling it a day. The argument goes like this: "you said that, it sounds like what Marx would say, and Marx was wrong in something completely unrelated, so therefore you're wrong too". It's a trap people too often fall into.