The Software Revolution

> The reasoning in the article is pretty garbage. "Software is destroying jobs and enriching a small handful of people...therefore, the 2 things that threaten society the most are synthetic biology and AI" ...what?

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. He mentions those two things because they're problems that are rapidly approaching us. We've been able to avoid the problems created by past scientific revolutions, but we're hitting a point now where small groups of people with easily-accessible tools can affect millions, possibly billions of others. The two easiest ways they can do this, is via manufactured disease and possibly computer virus systems that can disrupt global organizational systems.

It's a problem purely created by modern advances, and we don't have a solve yet, and no indication that there is anyone even trying.

> He then proposes legislation and reforms as the fix. Yet, everything we know about extremely concentrated power is that it easily escapes, often even controls, legislation and reforms.

It does, but that doesn't mean you throw your hands up and refuse the imperfect fix because it isn't perfect. It means you do it, and try to fix the screwups along the way. The nice part is, what you gain is time to fix the screwups, where going without would see massive destruction of life, wealth, and livelihood.

In the scope of factories in the industrial revolution, I think he's clearly referring to low-skill assembly line work, which made up the vast majority of jobs. You're referring to master craftsman. The problem with software is that there's no known way to create assembly-line-style software with lots of low skill labor. It can only be made by at least semi-skilled craftsman. Being able to cobble together an SQL query is nice, but what kind of useful product could you put out with a line of 50 people such low-skill people? None that I know of. Thus we're stuck with a lot less, higher skill jobs.

I agree on many points but I think there will always be more to do. We don't see it yet because we don't even know what new innovations will come, we are basing it on today's knowledge.

We have barely inched into space, robotics, drones, the oceans, we haven't even seen more than 50 miles down in the earth, our bodies and brains are still big mysteries, nanotechnology and more. We thought computers would free up lots of people but it hasn't really yet, just made more work to do and solve with the machines. I think the same will happen with robotics, drones, and AI. They will create work needs we didn't know existed and much more than we expect. Who knows, AI or robots might be better than us at creating jobs.

Agriculture freed up people to think. Software freed up people to think. Good things are coming still.

For most jobs, people want more to do, more adventure and more challenges. I think the world is hungry for new challenges not the same old jobs. It is a strange thing indeed though for people to try to hold onto lifeless, horrible jobs just to keep the cadence when we need a new rhythm. We are held back by holding onto this. We could employ many people to build an electric car network like the railroads and interstate system but we don't. We could be looking to space more and focusing kids on that but we are pushing them to finance, business and service jobs.

The actual problem might be our monetary system and how we reward. I am a big free or fair market proponent, but part of the problem of baked in bad jobs that add nothing are because of this system. I think monetary and currency is one area where it may hold us back until we solve this. However there currently is no better system of paying for a service that you need or want down to the individual, the truest exchange of value.

The question is, how much does the customer know about what they want and how can we steer it towards the real problems of today? How wrong are we with our rewards systems? Do only the wealthy have the right motivations to create systems we need and employ? Have we got ourselves in a wealth backdrift? The innovation market and economic engine is tied to wealth, for better or worse. There are many things we should be doing, that are rewarding to us all and need lots of work, that we can't because there isn't tons of market value yet. Maybe the reward system needs refactoring or some new iterations.

It is a big game design / game theory problem in the end. We might need AI and robots to solve this problem for us.

> requires humanity consenting to being destroyed by the AI in some way

We already have.

I mean, my parents car is both cellular-connected and has traction control / ABS. Theoretically most of those systems are airgapped, however, given the number of things controllable from the entertainment console I don't see how that could be the case.

For another example, look at our utility grid. We know they are both vulnerable and internet-connected.

Unless AI ends up always being airgapped - and potentially not even then - it will be able to destroy humanity. And it won't be. Most of the applications of strong AI require an absence of an airgap.

> We can—and we will—redistribute wealth...

Please, someone explain to me how wealth can be re-distributed?

I know how money can be re-distributed (and in-turn made less effective - i.e., more is required to purchase less), but how exactly do you either a) create "wealth" (via government policy or law) or b) take someone else's wealth, split it up into smaller peaces, and make the end-recipients more "wealthy"?

The reason I ask is because wealth is an effect of X, not a cause of X, just like gravity is an effect of mass, and not the cause of mass.

And that X tends to be all the things 97% of the population is either not willing to invest it, or does not have the capacity for...

So when you re-distribute money (as and from "wealth"), you also remove any motivation from anyone to actually create more wealth. And now you have a society that is fundamentally broken on both an economic and personal self-worth level.