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The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

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Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#141

Post by jacobolus »

the_watcher wrote: post #130
jacobolus wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? If people don’t need to work full time to nominally survive, that gives them much more leverage vs. employers. The BATNA during labor negotiations is now “live a spare lifestyle on basic income” vs. “let your whole family die starving in a gutter”.

He's speaking about leverage against the provider of UBI, who can simply lower or remove it.

Aha. Well that’s no different from any other public service, subsidy, or restriction then. The “leverage” is voting, the specific content of legislation/regulation, and the legal system, and if those don’t work mass protest.

For instance, “the ruling classes” could just as easily decide tomorrow to cut road maintenance, police response to violent crime, fire departments, emergency rooms, public schools, food stamps, public pension plans, access to parks, agricultural subsidies, grants for scientific research, government-backed loan programs, access to wifi spectrum, air pollution controls, carefully controlled monetary policy, bank deposit insurance, ....

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#142

Post by problems »

anigbrowl wrote: post #114
lend000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You frame the disruptions as if they were not a net benefit to society. Sure, governments could have banned the printing press and stayed in the dark ages (scribes would still be making a good living, though.) Edit: it all depends on tone... I still read the comment with the tone that implies disruptions as being as negative as they are positive, whereas I would frame disruptions are more positive. Granted, that's no…

I agree with you about the net benefit in purely economic terms, but it's easy to overweight the benefit when you were born after the costs were paid. Industrialization of production also inevitably led to the industrialization of warfare and we know how that turned out. I can't say with any certainty that we're definitely better off than if WW2 had never happened. Suppose it had not, and that there had been slower t…

I think this is sort of silly - many disruptive technological advancements have happened without causing a war.

Many of the advancements you speak of had nothing to do with war time even, they were made by private companies building things like faster and faster microprocessors.

Yes, war spurts technological advancement, but not in all areas - it might be more realistic to compare something like rockets or nuclear power.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#143

Post by prodmerc »

gozur88 wrote: post #110
prodmerc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Forever" is before the space race, before everyone was driving instead of riding, before everyone had the Internet, TV or even radios in their home. Every step in industrialization has hurt a lot of people, and their number is increasing every time. This time it's going to be millions. I don't know if that's enough for a critical mass of sorts for some huge revolt, it may be.

"...increasing every time."? I doubt that. I don't think we'll ever see a dislocation like we saw with agricuture in first world countries, where an occupation that employed 95%+ of the people is now done by something like 3% (depending on how you measure it).

Why, you're in luck I guess, that should happen again within the next two decades. Thankfully (or unfortunately?) the world is more globalized than ever, people will be moving all over the planet.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#144

Post by gozur88 »

prodmerc wrote: post #143
gozur88 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...increasing every time."? I doubt that. I don't think we'll ever see a dislocation like we saw with agricuture in first world countries, where an occupation that employed 95%+ of the people is now done by something like 3% (depending on how you measure it).

Why, you're in luck I guess, that should happen again within the next two decades. Thankfully (or unfortunately?) the world is more globalized than ever, people will be moving all over the planet.

I doubt that, too. People will continue to move from the countryside to cities within their countries, but the days of mostly open borders are probably coming to a close.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#145

Post by Stanleyc23 »

roryisok wrote: post #119
fictioncircle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny how boredom, vice, and the indignity of receiving income without continual labor loom in importance if and only if we're talking about technological unemployment. What of people receiving Social Security, pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents collected on real estate...? It is largely a desire for a control mechanism where the sheep are inherently dependent on the mecha…

I'm not against Universal Basic Income, but there are some things about it which worry me, and which don't seem to come up very much in these discussions. leverage If we're all on basic income, we no longer have any leverage if our "wages" are reduced. The ruling classes can decide to drop the amount we earn, and there's not much we can do about it. Sure, we can "vote", but we can't strike, which is a far more powerf…

Speaking of leverage, if UBI money can be used towards credit cards, we might expect to see even more people get hooked in perpetual credit card debt. Always just enough cash to swipe the plastic, never enough to wipe away the debt.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#146

Post by moxious »

computerex wrote: post #123
moxious wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people sound like they're planning how to invent enough bullshit jobs to provide everyone a regular 9-5 schedule and a supervisor even after machines are doing all the strictly necessary labor. I think that's mistaken on many fronts. First, new jobs that get invented aren't bullshit. Just as the internet destroyed DVD manufacturing jobs, it created smartphone app jobs, which weren't make-work. Second, the day…

Everyone knows the AI community failed to deliver on strong AI, the modern boom in automation and machine learning is not about strong AI, rather the exact opposite. Instead of trying to create artificial general intelligence, researchers are now focused on solving very specific problems. Like speech recognition, or machine vision, or predictive analytics. What's awesome is that deep learning seems to be coming out w…

I understand that modern techniques are different than older approaches and I'm enthusiastic about their potential.

But going from saying that these approaches will improve things to claiming that they'll destroy the middle class and effectively end employment everywhere is a crazy leap that the article and excessively optimistic people often make.

We can agree that the tech is wonderful, but disagree on the future it leads to.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#147

Post by BWStearns »

Animats wrote: post #25

There are basic capabilities humans have, and capabilities machines have. Human capabilities are more or less fixed. Machine capabilities keep expanding. About half of work done today could be automated with technology we already have. All it takes is wider deployment of the most automated technologies. The current phase is not because computers are smarter. It's that they're really cheap. If a computer can do it, it…

I get your point but I'm not entirely sure human capabilities are fixed. In fact I would opt to say that we're the only species that has evidence of not being fixed in capabilities. I have no doubt that pg was a better programmer in the 90s than I am today. However if me now and him then were pitted against each other to build some web app I'm thinking I have pretty good odds. Human capabilities are their inate skills * education * available tooling. Education and tooling improve as time goes forward (generally and hopefully).

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#148

Post by fictioncircle »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #128
fictioncircle wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we're all on basic income, we no longer have any leverage if our "wages" are reduced. The ruling classes can decide to drop the amount we earn, and there's not much we can do about it. Sure, we can "vote", but we can't strike, which is a far more powerful way to fight against pay decreases. You could still strike. UBI has nothing to do with employment and it enables you to sustain strikes longer as you are guara…

What exactly are you striking if the robots create everything? I'm not sure what you could withhold that would upset the government. I guess you could stop consuming things, but you don't have the money to consume very much anyway on just UBI.

We are a long way from SkyNet and self maintaining robots.

Realistically, the robots are simply going to replace Fast Food workers and such like they do in factories. (i.e. massively reduced but non-0 employment) UBI assumes people work but not nesc. full time and sufficient to take care of all of their needs.

If it gets to the point where you have no ability to earn any money for anyone, well, no offense you are probably screwed no matter the government unless its very benevolent. The forces you are talking about are wholly independent of UBI's existence.

Frankly, the belief that "lowering UBI" will be tolerated amuses me because the US has a UBI-esque system for the retired and it has the largest, most powerful lobbying organization in the US.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#149

Post by fictioncircle »

Stanleyc23 wrote: post #145
roryisok wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not against Universal Basic Income, but there are some things about it which worry me, and which don't seem to come up very much in these discussions. leverage If we're all on basic income, we no longer have any leverage if our "wages" are reduced. The ruling classes can decide to drop the amount we earn, and there's not much we can do about it. Sure, we can "vote", but we can't strike, which is a far more powerf…

Speaking of leverage, if UBI money can be used towards credit cards, we might expect to see even more people get hooked in perpetual credit card debt. Always just enough cash to swipe the plastic, never enough to wipe away the debt.

Yes, but no more than we do with social security and our existing system realistically. And the threat of repeated bankruptcies by UBI folks is likely enough of a threat to keep it from getting out of hand (and if it does, its the credit card companies that get burned by the bankruptcies).

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#150

Post by fictioncircle »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #129
fictioncircle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny how boredom, vice, and the indignity of receiving income without continual labor loom in importance if and only if we're talking about technological unemployment. What of people receiving Social Security, pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents collected on real estate...? It is largely a desire for a control mechanism where the sheep are inherently dependent on the mecha…

LOL. Millions of young men with housing and food and nothing to do. You just described a standing army.

That is the traditional method of UBI. Military expansionism. ;)
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