The problem isn't AI. It's capitalism. People are fearing the ultimate triumph of capital over labor.. If people owned the robots, then there would be no problem.
The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
231–240 of 268 posts
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Homeless people almost all have mental illness, substance abuse problems, or some combination of the two. I'm not seeing why you and the OP think they are representative of the general population in any way. They are, pretty much by definition, people who are too messed up to function in society.
You couldn't be more wrong here. Have some facts: https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet
Posting a link to a spun document from an advocacy group doesn't actually prove me wrong.
For example, "sleeping in public places not meant for human habitation" would include anyone who has ever taken a nap in the airport, even one time.
When the piece starts out with an obviously bogus definition, there's really not much point in going through it point by point. It has zero credibility from the start.
Other sources (easily found by Google) suggest that up to 2/3 of the real chronic homeless population has problems with alcohol and/or other substances
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
well robots arent just doing low skilled jobs here. They are on the verge of replacing many white collaar jobs
This is an important point. AI could replace many programmers for example. Or make better investment decisions. It has the potential to kill the entire notion of wealth as we currently know it , regardless of social standing. What then?
The fear is that capital will own all the means of production and services and what then of everyone else?
Hope UBI is implement?
Or perhaps become more self-sufficient? The hype around 3D printing seems to have died down. I guess a lot of grand visions weren't realised and a lot of cheap trinkets printed instead but it still contains an idea that should be nurtured: robotics and AI at the grass roots level. Don't let capital own all the means of sufficiency.
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#234I still think it is the end of all classes.
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#235>McAfee pointed to newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle class job creation since the 1980s. False. McAfee will find a corresponding increase in middle class jobs in India and China and elsewhere for the same time period. The narrative that says automation has destroyed the middle class is demonstrably overstated to the point of being close to false. Employers arbitraged labor rates across borders…
While some jobs have been replaced over sees, it seems like more have been replaced by gradual automation.
https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9...
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how they don't address the point being brought up. They explicitly point out past scenarios where these sort of predictions were wrong. I think the peddlers of these predictions are disingenuous and intellectually lazy. If they want others to take them seriously they need to explain why their predictions don't fall under the same criticisms.
I like the idea from the CP Grey video on automation: Better technology did not make more better jobs for horses. Horses are still around, but the population peaked around the turn of the century (19th-20th). How good does automation have to get before large portions of the population find themselves in the same position as early 20th century horses.
People can do mental labor. Horses can't. Automation can't.
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#237That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…
A point i'm always surprised is not discussed much in the basic income debate is loss of control.
Whenever a job is performed by a person, that person has the power to refuse doing the job or put their own spin on it. The effect is that there some basic checks of ethics. This keeps businesses from doing things blatantly against the interests of society and ensures that CEOs with grand visions of shaping humanity are forced to discuss their ideas with others before implementing them.
All that is not true if a major part of society is not part of the work process. In the extreme, that could make the old "bond villain with robot army" scenario actually credible. But more realistically, it could lead to large and important aspects of society being under unchecked control by a relatively small number of people. This is already true today with communication and data collection (e.g. google/apple/etc can push arbitrary updates to billions of phones around the world without any sort of oversight) and it will likely be the same with transport and manufacturing in the future.
I fear basic income not only doesn't address this problem but even worsens it by declaring it normal that a large part of society does not take part at all in shaping that society.
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
You haven't been watching the news dude: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603431/as-goldman-embrace... Yay, bring the downvotes, doesn't change the fact that not even our jobs are safe and downvoting such opinions won't make the problem go away - in the future we'll probably build software systems the way we train dogs today! And yes, we'll taste our own medicine :-)
Stock trading and software development aren't tasks I'd rate as difficult mental labor. In fact, the reason such jobs are desirable, is specifically because they're actually kind of cushy. Stock trading is a task that has been over-complicated mostly because investors need to engage in double-speak, so that motives for trades that lead to financial gain can be sufficiently obfuscated, when explained to auditors, judg…
Every mental task can be reduced to putting 0's and 1's in the right order. However, reducing the tasks to this point isn't really helpful in the discussion. You pretty quickly arrive at a mind bending number of ways to order 0's and 1's, or "legos".
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#239The problem isn't AI. It's capitalism. People are fearing the ultimate triumph of capital over labor.. If people owned the robots, then there would be no problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAwB9-9QOQI
It's an interesting perspective, but what would stop people from having shares in companies that own robots?
Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
If UBI is garnishable/attachable, credit card companies could simply wait to get paid from a slice of future UBI payments, meaning there might be increased risk of over-extension. (I haven't thought deeply enough about whether it should or shouldn't be garnishable. I lean towards the idea that it shouldn't, but then that makes it less valuable in certain ways.)
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/sally-herigstad-...
> Another rule is that they cannot take more than the excess of your earnings over 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage (currently $7.25 per hour). That means $217.50 per week (30 X $7.25) is safe from any garnishment at all.
307.2552 = $11,310
You are largely immune to garnishment on a $12k/year UBI (for instance) under existing law. Bankruptcy would likely remove any garnishment if you only had UBI. I'm not a lawyer but the impression I have is pretty much under $20k, very little garnishment will occur due to:
A) Costs of recovery
B) The bankruptcy process favors the poor person declaring bankruptcy in terms of who walks away with "more".
I highly suspect the current floor on how much of your wages can be garnished would be kept equal to UBI and no one extends substantial credit to people on UBI for that reason.