Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by pmyjavec » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:36 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #164

Houshalter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah a lot of unemployed textile workers did go into poverty or even starve to death at the time. I've read some speculation that the first industrial revolution was a net negative on society initially, and took many decades to actually improve the average standard of living. There was a reason people gathered in mobs to break the new machines. They were hungry. But still the industrial revolution didn't really…

I think this is factually incorrect. Women used to spend the majority of their free time spinning thread and sewing clothes for their family . The average person owned three outfits total, and wore basically one outfit every single day. The industrial revolution dramatically increased both production and consumption. We now own different outfits for every day, dozens of special occasion fashions which must be regular…

It's actually clearly unsustainable the way we're consuming clothing and pretty much all goods, I read in s book published recently that if everyone in China purchased a new pair of wool socks tomorrow, we would be out of wool.

Guess who is getting an appetite for wool socks?

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

#212

Post by ahartman00 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #195

_andromeda_ wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100% with the hollow legacy-chasing you're talking about. Please do elaborate more on how he's crippled the space program. If you were to ask me, I'd recommend not having government involvement in such things anyway.

I do think that there is a long-term security interest for the human race in populating other planets with self-sufficient colonies that could survive natural disasters on Earth. But I'm not really informed enough of the economics of space exploration to have a firm opinion about what the government's role is, though I agree that it should be as small as possible. What I do know is that he's suddenly talking a big ga…

I think it might have had something to do with the recession. Now that the economy is improving, it is a better time for such things, imo. I applaud your long term thinking, but the short term is important, especially for those worried about their jobs.

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

#213

Post by totalZero » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 1:00 AM UTC

unprepare wrote: post #203

boona wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and the other sets up her own email private server which got hacked by a [taxi driver]( https://www.rt.com/news/362417-hacker-guccifer-clinton-roman... ). As intelligent as he can be, if he was able to get in, it's easy to imagine that any world government had access to all information that came her way.

I dont know if Russia Today is a source I would choose, given that the counterclaim is that it was the russian state behind the hack...

Argumentum ad hominem.

RT is state-supported, but it is only one of a number of sources that all reported pretty much the same thing. Guccifer, who was an unemployed taxi driver when arrested, led to the disclosure of HRC's server, and claims to have hacked it "like, twice."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/guccifer-hacker-who-says...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/04/romanian-hacker-g...

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hacker-guccifer-i-got-inside-hill...

^^^ There. Mainstream, American-as-apple-pie sources.

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

#214

Post by rl12345 » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

Every time I listen or read Obama talk, I become a bigger fan of the guy.

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

#215

Post by zaroth » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 3:11 AM UTC

pmyjavec wrote: post #209

zaroth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a broader timeline. It used to take humans over 500 hours of labor spinning, weaving, and sewing to produce a single shirt. Automating textile production has "put more people out of work" than computers ever will. Do you think for a second we would ever want to go back to how it was? Do you ask the inventor of the sewing machine how they will start giving back? These inventions free humanity for more worthwh…

Sorry but this is wrong, your clothes aren't being magically created by automated sewing equipment, they're being made in the third world, and hundreds of hours go into garments, The reason you work the treadmill to keep buying them? Planned obsolescence. See http://truecostmovie.com for more information. This common narrative that, "automation" will let us finally get to tackle the real issues really is a myth, it's…

It's the spinning and weaving that's been automated, which was the bulk of the manual labor. Sewing the cloth of a fine dress shirt takes between 30 minutes and 4 hours, says Quora.

For that shirt, you work an hour to earn $150, pay $50 in payroll/income taxes, pay $100 for shirt, of which maybe another $20 of that will also be taxes (sales tax at the point of sale, and then income tax on the corporation, not even counting taxes on the materials and wages that they buy with the remaining $80).

Figure around half of every dollar you spend is either taxes on the way in, or taxes on the way out. The problem is decidedly not a lack of taxes.

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

#216

Post by _andromeda_ » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #200

_andromeda_ wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you value your liberty? I bet you do and you just don't realize you've been slowly but surely losing it. I would venture that the only extremism, so to speak, that exists is in how government has increased in both its size and ineffectiveness. When you have a combination of the two aforementioned features, then things inevitably get worse. > Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about…

You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric. > In the late 19th century, when there was less government intervention, America saw the most rapid rate of economic growth. The late 19th century of American history featured a large number of one-time-only economic improvements and wholescale pillaging…

>You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric.

I think you just don't like that I'm right about this. If I'm making a valid argument, should it matter that I'm presenting it in a manner that is inconsistent with some form of political correctness?

>Additionally, unrestrained consolidation of competition into cooperative trusts gave rise to monopolies that Theodore Roosevelt spent considerable political capital resolving in the early 20th century via lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). See Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1903) and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911).

No one is saying that monopolies are good. In fact, one could argue that they aren't very capitalistic (capitalism requires that there's voluntary exchange and when you as a consumer have only one option to choose a basic necessity from, then that looks more like the very opposite of voluntary exchange).

As a side note, it is however curious that when you bring up these facts that sort of demonize the likes of Morgan, the fact that he single-handedly led the financing of the bail out of America during the economic crises of 1907 and 1893 never comes up. In 1893, the then President, Cleveland, borrowed $65 million in gold from J.P. Morgan to support the gold standard thus ending the panic.

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

#217

Post by wildmusings » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

ap22213 wrote: post #205

wildmusings wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could've, would've, should've. Let's look at the one area where he had almost total discretion, foreign policy and national security. There's not much to speak of in terms of success there. Not only did he fail to advance the interests of the US, he also failed to deliver on progressive promises of scaling back the surveillance state. The recent shenanigans with Russia are incredibly telling. Perhaps you remember in…

What's any of that have to do with pushing technology, though?

My point is that I don't buy the excuses. Obama is a good tactician, his masterful campaign and propaganda machine are proof of that, but he's clearly not an effective strategic leader.

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

#218

Post by will_brown » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:37 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #28

will_brown wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 une…

Unemployment is a very difficult number to define and calculate. Do you count those that are not actively looking for work, and don't want to look for work? e.g. House(wife|husband)s, semi-retired people. Do you count those that have given up looking for work? Do you count those that are working part time, but looking for full time work (i.e. the underemployed)? Do you count those that aren't really looking for work…

>Unemployment is a very difficult number to define and calculate.

That is my point entirely to OP. If the concern is the Gov. is willing to block new technology adoption bc of concerns of mass unemployment, then it isn't unreasonable to think the Gov. would allow the technology and hide some of the unemployment by "redefining" unemployment.

I am not sure why I would be down voted as these moving goal posts are a well known and controversial issue, including, but not limited to the many variables you highlighted.

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

#219

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #164

Houshalter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah a lot of unemployed textile workers did go into poverty or even starve to death at the time. I've read some speculation that the first industrial revolution was a net negative on society initially, and took many decades to actually improve the average standard of living. There was a reason people gathered in mobs to break the new machines. They were hungry. But still the industrial revolution didn't really…

I think this is factually incorrect. Women used to spend the majority of their free time spinning thread and sewing clothes for their family . The average person owned three outfits total, and wore basically one outfit every single day. The industrial revolution dramatically increased both production and consumption. We now own different outfits for every day, dozens of special occasion fashions which must be regular…

Everyone knows that in the long run the industrial revolution was a positive. But at the time, the disruption caused lots of misery. Farmers were driven from farms that had relatively good living conditions, to cities with awful working conditions, living conditions, and lower wages. Eventually things improved, but it didn't happen overnight.

What does it matter if there are more clothes, if there aren't any consumers to buy them? We are looking at a world where humans are obsolete just like horses. There is nothing an unskilled worker can do that a machine can't, at least in the near future. And many skilled workers do jobs vulnerable to automation as well. The vast majority of the human population is unnecessary, just as horses were after the invention of cars.

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

#220

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 7:03 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #197

Houshalter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what is about to happen. Deep learning has the potential to do robot control. Currently researchers are beating tons of video games using reinforcement learning with deep networks. Applying the same methods to robots shouldn't be too hard. And we've also come a long way with machine vision as well over the past 5 years.

That's what Rod Brooks claimed when he started Rethink Robotics. It hasn't worked out well.

The ability for AI to approach these problems has only been possible in the last 2-3 years. The tech was really not there in 2008, and it's still very rough and cutting edge in 2016. But we are at least seeing the first glimpses that it's definitely possible. If AI can play starcraft, then surely it can control a simple robot. And anyway see my other comment.