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Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

nytimes.com

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Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#31

Post by davedx »

tdfx wrote: post #28
gutnor wrote: post #22

IMO it depends a lot on the timescale. Give it 100-200 years and all the positive scenario are the likely outcome. In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have to do and most of their needs have been automated. The problem is the transition to there and that's the annoying thing in all those discussions, nobody ever talk about it. For example, Industrial Revolution and the 2 World Wars…

> In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have to do and most of their needs have been automated. This has not been the trend. Interconnectivity and ease of travel were supposed to relax the amount of work we do, but instead people put in more hours than ever. The efficiency gains have created winners and losers, but both are working at least as hard as before.

Depends on the country. In the Netherlands we are definitely working less :)

"In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours."

Nice tables: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/studies/tn0803046s/nl080...

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#32

Post by krapp »

owenmarshall wrote: post #12
dmoo wrote: post #4

The question that always occurs to me is, if most people are to be jobless, then who can afford all the products and services provided by the robots?

I'm not sure a capitalist system makes sense in a techno-utopia. If the robots make themselves, mine the minerals, smelt the ores, assemble the smartphones, and deliver them to me, there is not a labor cost associated with assembling the smartphone, so why should there be a price? Maybe the "cost" comes from the loss of the mineral in the ground, but if we're going full on techno-utopia the robots would reclaim the m…

Companies don't automate to reduce potential profits, though, but to reduce the cost and inefficiency of human labor. Presumably, even with a fully automated infrastructure, there would still be a human-run corporation at the top, otherwise why would they bother creating the system at all?

But then I may simply not have gone far enough down the rabbithole in my conception of 'techno-utopia.' If the automation is truly self-sustaining and self-contained, in essence, a complete AI economy in and of itself, then perhaps the "cost" comes in the burden of including humans at all?

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

owenmarshall wrote: post #24
TeMPOraL wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once again sethf hits the nail on the head. The response is entirely up to us. I disagree. Short of halting the progress of robotics and software, there seems to be no way to avoid the continued automation of things, and economy, politicians and social habits will have to follow and adapt, like they always did. More and more I'm buying into the view that it's the technological progress that drives cultural change,…

>I disagree. I'm not sure with what, we're both saying the same thing. ;-) I haven't read too much of it yet but your link looks very interesting, thanks!

Well I understood that Seth was saying that politicians can decide to stop job automation or let it happen. I believe that they can't; they have far too little influence to stop a force this strong.

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#34

Post by Filligree »

damon_c wrote: post #23
pacala wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: who needs the jobless people? http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/hsp/soaiv_07_ch10.p... Table 1 U.S. Equine Population During Mechanization of Agriculture and Transportation Year Number of Horses and Mules 1900 21,531,635 1905 22,077,000 1910 24,042,882 1915 26,493,000 1920 25,199,552 1925 22,081,520 1930 18,885,856 1935 16,676,000 1940 13,931,531 1945 11,629,000 1950 7,604,000 1955 4,309,000 1…

Wait... so are you proposing a metaphor where we are the horses and mules?

He didn't say so explicitly, but the horse-count is typically used in relation to this point:

What happens when the value of your work falls below the cost of subsistence? In the case of the horses, once feeding them was no longer worthwhile, the answer was simple: They didn't.

Hopefully we won't do anything similar for humans. It would be the most horrendous eugenics program of all time.

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#36

Post by superuser2 »

gutnor wrote: post #22

IMO it depends a lot on the timescale. Give it 100-200 years and all the positive scenario are the likely outcome. In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have to do and most of their needs have been automated. The problem is the transition to there and that's the annoying thing in all those discussions, nobody ever talk about it. For example, Industrial Revolution and the 2 World Wars…

>In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have to do and most of their needs have been automated.

How will their living expenses be paid, then?

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#37

Post by pjc50 »

cousin_it wrote: post #25

Nah, it's not as bad as the article says. It's much worse. 1) If you don't lose your job to a robot, you'll lose it to an emulated human. An em requires only a tiny chip and a little electricity, and is every bit as capable of doing empathy and creativity as you are. 2) If you don't lose your job to an em, you'll lose it (and your life) to unfriendly self-improving AI that has a use for your atoms. If you think there…

The feasibility and cost of "emulated humans" is not settled; it may well be physically impossible.

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#38

Post by cousin_it »

true_religion wrote: post #18
steven777400 wrote: post #7

Whenever I see the "positive" prognostications, I wonder if the author is intentionally spinning a tale for their own ultimate benefit, or if I'm just way too cynical. I don't see any way that the advance of automation can do anything but destroy any desirable concept of society. To me, the future inexorably looks like Detroit or Nairobi, not like Tokyo or Singapore. Education is a red herring. Most people (and I'd i…

I'm guessing that manual labor will be a thing of the past, and I struggle to see how this is a bad thing overall. If the same work is being done without human intervention, why not just give people who're unemployed the products of that labour?

Because the entities that control the machines and give their products away will be outcompeted by entities that keep the products to fuel their own growth. Over time, the former kind of entities will die out. This is a general argument, the "entities" could be rich people, companies, governments, AIs, etc.

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#39

Post by nsxwolf »

I think I'm going to have to stop clicking on these ones.

The future according to HN can be summed up as 30 years or so of Basic Income, after which we will be turned into paperclips by an unfriendly AI.

Maybe it's inevitable, but then there's not much point worrying about it. It's just another kind of death.

Re: Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split

#40

Post by pjc50 »

Filligree wrote: post #34
damon_c wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... so are you proposing a metaphor where we are the horses and mules?

He didn't say so explicitly, but the horse-count is typically used in relation to this point: What happens when the value of your work falls below the cost of subsistence? In the case of the horses, once feeding them was no longer worthwhile, the answer was simple: They didn't. Hopefully we won't do anything similar for humans. It would be the most horrendous eugenics program of all time.

This is the pretty much the stated goal of "austerity" benefits cuts. It's already starting to have the effect in the UK of disabled people starving or freezing to death due to not being able to afford to carry on living. So far in small numbers ...
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