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

hyponymo.us

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

#81

Post by patmcc »

chongli wrote: post #77
patmcc wrote: post #12

I really can't imagine 100% unemployment, because I think there will always be a demand for actual human people in some roles: hairdresser, waiter, singer, prostitute, masseuse, athlete, actor, croupier, etc. Will robots/AI be good enough to do all these jobs? Sure, they might even be now. But as long as some people want to be sung to / served by / entertained by an actual flesh-and-blood human, there will still be e…

Sure and there will always be some demand for horses for various purposes but the total demand for horse labour is way below its peak in 1915. Do you foresee any future technology which might reinvigorate the demand for horses?

Increased human unemployment might, actually. If both cost and time weren't huge barriers, I expect more people would ride.

But I think the future for humans looks somewhat similar to that of horses today; a small number of us will still be "working", but more because of individual preferences than any kind of need.

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

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

chongli wrote: post #78
TeMPOraL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can start with the same question and reach different conclusions. Does this mean that you're still wrong? And does the fact that Marx was wrong about one thing means he was wrong about everything else? It's too easy to group some idea with some others and then dismiss the whole thing by noting that one the other ones are wrong.

What, specifically, was Marx wrong about?

Something, apparently, since every time I get called a Marxist the other party means to say I'm an idiot.

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

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

patmcc wrote: post #81
chongli wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and there will always be some demand for horses for various purposes but the total demand for horse labour is way below its peak in 1915. Do you foresee any future technology which might reinvigorate the demand for horses?

Increased human unemployment might, actually. If both cost and time weren't huge barriers, I expect more people would ride. But I think the future for humans looks somewhat similar to that of horses today; a small number of us will still be "working", but more because of individual preferences than any kind of need.

It's not about cost and time; horse maintenance is more labour intensive, and then there's a problem of waste. Actually shortly before the first automobile was constructed, London authorities were worried that if the demand for horses keeps increasing, the city will literally be drowned in manure.

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

#84

Post by elihu »

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…

I think the idea that programmers will be replaced by software-writing AI programs is silly and unrealistic, but that isn't to say that programmer jobs are secure. What's really going on is that developer's tools are getting better.

Languages, debugging tools, version control systems and bug trackers are all rapidly reducing the number of developer-hours required to implement a given program, which we should expect to reduce the size of the programmer workforce eventually if we can't find new things for them to do.

It is possible that we will find enough new problems for programmers to solve to counteract increased productivity, but for many applications, most of the general problems that one would hire a programmer to do already have reasonable-quality solutions. I think we'll see smaller and smaller teams of hyper-productive developers working on a shrinking set of increasingly esoteric projects, or things with a single specialized use (like calculating taxes for that particular year).

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

#85

Post by TeMPOraL »

patmcc wrote: post #80
guelo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hairdresser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccP-ayh6Wlc waiter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBuIhH9aaSA singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kM3n64WJmo prostitute: soon (fleshlight+occulus) masseuse: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BXJZB2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=... athlete: http://robogames.net/index.php actor: there are tons of CGI actors in movies croupier: slot machines, video poker, etc

My point wasn't that elements of those jobs couldn't be done (or even done better, by some measures) by machines, but that there exist people with a strong preference to humans in those jobs. Take croupiers; we have very good video poker, automated roulette tables, virtual blackjack, but still lots of humans dealing out cards (especially in the high roller rooms). I was at a casino in Las Vegas two weeks ago; the rob…

There no doubt will always be demand for something to be done by humans, just because we're kind of a whimsy species. But I see no way for such jobs to become the basis of the economy. We need to end the concept that everyone has to work for a living. Otherwise it's not the 100% automation that will kill us, it's the 50% automation, i.e. half of the population not being able to earn their bread.

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

#86

Post by bryanlarsen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46
api wrote: post #40

If we dealt rationally and benevolently with it, 100% unemployment would be an age of abundance... almost a post-scarcity society. I do not expect to see it soon, but I think it's possible. If technology continues to advance at the same pace it has for the past 50 years and if we can engineer our way out from under the impending fossil fuel energy crunch, I'd say it's probable within the century. Even before things g…

Indeed. Our real problem is that of coordination, and that there is no easy path from here to there - if we keep just following the market's lead hoping it will magically solve everything, we're not going to get to that age of abundance.

I think there is a (relatively) easy path from here to there. Let's presume that we want to create a Star Trek post-scarcity future.

One theory I like for Star Trek economics is that they've got an extremely high basic income, the equivalent of $10M/year or so. Energy costs about the same (~10c/kwh), and is the limiting factor in replicator economics.

Some stuff is really expensive, like land and human labour. Replicator-made material goods are incredibly cheap, unless you need an huge amount -- you couldn't afford to buy a copy of the Enterprise.

Obviously you don't need to work, and most don't. A few are VR addicted, but most are just dilettantes, they spend their time doing hobbies, art and travel, much like the able bodied retired population in the western world. A large minority get "real" jobs, but mainly for purpose and prestige. And some do it to get rich -- they want to buy a planet or a starship or something.

The nice thing about this theory is that the path is quite clear: start with a very small (possibly inadequate) basic income, and increase it regularly as circumstances permit.

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

#87

Post by cranklin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #62
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.

autonomous vehicles and biomechanical grabbing hands are completely different than engineering software. The aforementioned tasks, while an impressive feat (especially in computer vision), are programmable tasks. To create "robots" that can engineer/create new software without a software engineer is not going to happen in this lifetime.

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

#88

Post by 6t6t6 »

That same concern existed 150 years ago and the truth is that we are still working the same amount of hours as before. We just don't do the same things for living.

There will always be jobs to do. Most of the manufacturing and repetitive jobs can be automated, but there will always be jobs that only humans can do. For instance, food can be processed by a machine, but I prefer to pay to see how a sushi master prepares each Nigiri for me. Or, would would someone prefer a massage chair rather than getting that massage from a human? Music? Arts? Design? All that things can be done by machines, but we will always prefer to get them from a human. Our lifestyle will change. Objects will loose value because they will be extremely cheap to produce and our jobs will be more focused towards services to other people.

What concerns me most is the inequality and how the richness produced by machines will flow though the society. With that level of automation in the industry it will be really easy for a few people to control the production of all the goods.

But this is something that has to be solved by the politics.

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

#89

Post by spiralpolitik »

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…

I don't think the current economic model can survive 50% unemployment and to be honest I think social unrest would take its toll before we even got that far. We may even see a partial collapse of society in some developed countries leading wiping out the advances of last century.

The bigger question is can we as a species evolve into a more altruistic species and move beyond capital. Some days I don't think we can...

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

#90

Post by api »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Our real problem is that of coordination, and that there is no easy path from here to there - if we keep just following the market's lead hoping it will magically solve everything, we're not going to get to that age of abundance.

I think there is a (relatively) easy path from here to there. Let's presume that we want to create a Star Trek post-scarcity future. One theory I like for Star Trek economics is that they've got an extremely high basic income, the equivalent of $10M/year or so. Energy costs about the same (~10c/kwh), and is the limiting factor in replicator economics. Some stuff is really expensive, like land and human labour. Replic…

That's the only cogent explanation of how the Trek universe's economy might actually function I've ever heard.

So huge goods (e.g. Starship) would be pricey, but everything else except labor feels "free." Definitely describes how that society seems to operate, and I could imagine it working if you had replicators, matter antimatter power generation, and other kinds of mega-technology.

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