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Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

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Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#11

Post by pmyjavec »

notliketherest wrote: post #2

"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." No doubt that advances in technology have always done away with jobs. We're almost to the point at which the biggest blue collar industry (truck drivers) is about to be wiped out by self driving trucks. What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovat…

Why aren't you "concerned" about people losing their jobs?

The alternatives are tech companies start to pay their taxes and humans start to use tech to care for one another, genuinely, not just wealthy Silicon Valley types trying to make buckets because their "entitled" to do so and pretend it's all in the name of progress.

The idea of the Internet and Automation were exciting to me as it was about liberation and decentralisation, from where I'm sitting it's turning into a bit of a joke, it's just empowering those who own the tech and their not giving a whole lot back right now.

Not attacking you personally, but this, attitude of "don't worry, those people who will be made redundant will be fine" thing is a myth, they will suffer and so will their families.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#12

Post by throwaway729 »

notliketherest wrote: post #2

"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." No doubt that advances in technology have always done away with jobs. We're almost to the point at which the biggest blue collar industry (truck drivers) is about to be wiped out by self driving trucks. What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovat…

Obama's answer to this seems to be training and education as opposed to regulating away progress. See: this article.

I'd expect the latter to come from the right in the US, ironically enough.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#13

Post by msvan »

cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

I also thought it was a slightly inappropriate metaphor, but it gets the point across.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#14

Post by golergka »

cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

Sounds like a perfect use for it. I'm understanding his use of it as that the thousand flowers should only bloom in the beginning, and later the field should be much tighter regulated. When you replace people's lives with different AIs, it becomes much less tragic, thankfully.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#15

Post by golergka »

pmyjavec wrote: post #11
notliketherest wrote: post #2

"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." No doubt that advances in technology have always done away with jobs. We're almost to the point at which the biggest blue collar industry (truck drivers) is about to be wiped out by self driving trucks. What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovat…

Why aren't you "concerned" about people losing their jobs? The alternatives are tech companies start to pay their taxes and humans start to use tech to care for one another, genuinely, not just wealthy Silicon Valley types trying to make buckets because their "entitled" to do so and pretend it's all in the name of progress. The idea of the Internet and Automation were exciting to me as it was about liberation and dec…

A lot of comments like yours are based on the assumption of "giving back". I don't quite understand it.

Let's suppose I've founded booking.com and put a LOT of travel agents out of business. At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents?

I agree that they are miserable because of my actions. However, in real life, nothing happens because of a single reason. They are also miserable because of free choice of their former customers, who abandoned them. Those customers have profited from the change too: after all, they chose me because of lower prices and better service. Why am I, and not the customers that left them, have this responsibility?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#16

Post by msvan »

What does Hacker News think about AI? Is it real this time, or are we in for another winter? I'm seeing a lot of grand claims, and it certainly seems like there are plenty of applications, but I'm still not totally convinced that it will turn the entire economy upside down.

Given the enormous amount of press, tweets, blog posts, conferences, degree programs, seminars and interviews popping up it seems like there has to be something more than just hot air here. Still, the most outrageous predictions are hinged on breakthroughs in unsupervised learning happening. Taking the pessimistic view on science, what if we don't get there?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#17

Post by jMyles »

msvan wrote: post #13
cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

I also thought it was a slightly inappropriate metaphor, but it gets the point across.

By "the point," do you mean that the government intends to initially encourage innovation, only to later stifle, repress, and criminalize the elements it doesn't like?

I mean, that's the reasonable application of the metaphor, right?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#18

Post by will_brown »

notliketherest wrote: post #2

"But it also has some downsides that we’re gonna have to figure out in terms of not eliminating jobs. It could increase inequality. It could suppress wages." No doubt that advances in technology have always done away with jobs. We're almost to the point at which the biggest blue collar industry (truck drivers) is about to be wiped out by self driving trucks. What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovat…

>What I'm concerned about is the government stifling innovation such as driverless trucks to retain those jobs...What is the alternative?

More likely the Government comes up with "innovative" ways to hide these people from the official unemployment numbers. Somehow unemployment is calculated at only 4.9% today...add 3.5 million newly unemployed commercial drivers tomorrow (>10% of US total population) and the new unemployment rate = 4.9%.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#19

Post by eric_h »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #9
ronald_raygun wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take a look at this argument done by Obama's main economist. He basically argues that UBI isn't actually that good because it doesn't shrink the gap as much as current systems (progressive taxes and the like). Plus it is a good read anyways because it is a much longer detailed analysis. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...

"The issue is not that automation will render the vast majority of the population unemployable. Instead, it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation." So those who are doing jobs that AI can do better and more cheaply than any human, they are going to somehow gain skills and/or ability to perform new good, high paying jobs c…

Time is money. The actual monetary cost of training is irrelevant if you don't have the time to actually do it (learning new skills has never paid the bills in the right now timeframe).

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#20

Post by Swizec »

msvan wrote: post #16

What does Hacker News think about AI? Is it real this time, or are we in for another winter? I'm seeing a lot of grand claims, and it certainly seems like there are plenty of applications, but I'm still not totally convinced that it will turn the entire economy upside down. Given the enormous amount of press, tweets, blog posts, conferences, degree programs, seminars and interviews popping up it seems like there has…

Unlike 30, 20, or even 10 years ago, we have heaps upon heaps of labeled datasets now. So much human life happens through technology that we are doing an astounding job of producing labeled datasets.

And computers are fast now. And RAM is infinite. And GPUs are fast and plentiful. And all of this is cheap.

AI stuff is already real more than most of us realize on a day-to-day basis. While machines might not be "intelligent" per se, their cleverness has definitely started impacting desk jobs.

The desk job stuff is what most of those alarmist news items are worried about. Nobody seems to worry [too much] about reducing blue collar jobs through automation. Can you imagine how many people you'd need to unload a modern container ship without computers tracking stuff and optimizing storage? Or how much work it would take to harvest modern crops where automated harvesters are used?

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