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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

#41

Post by arethuza »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
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.

Out of interest, why do you think that emulating or uploading a human mind might be physically impossible?

I guess my argument would be - if a relatively small amount of mush in a head can do all that clever stuff - why can't something else?

[NB I think we are a long way (> 100 years) from actually even getting close to mind uploads]

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

#42

Post by cousin_it »

pjc50 wrote: post #37
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.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the things that threaten us turned out to be physically impossible?

"At the same time, the parts we do understand, such as that human intelligence is almost certainly running on top of neurons firing, suggest very strongly that human intelligence is not the limit of the possible. Neurons fire at, say, 200 hertz top speed; transmit signals at 150 meters/second top speed; and even in the realm of heat dissipation (where neurons still have transistors beat cold) a synaptic firing still dissipates around a million times as much heat as the thermodynamic limit for a one-bit irreversible operation at 300 Kelvin. So without shrinking the brain, cooling the brain, or invoking things like reversible computing, it ought to be physically possible to build a mind that works at least a million times faster than a human one, at which rate a subjective year would pass for every 31 sidereal seconds, and all the time from Ancient Greece up until now would pass in less than a day. This is talking about hardware because the hardware of the brain is a lot easier to understand, but software is probably a lot more important; and in the area of software, we have no reason to believe that evolution came up with the optimal design for a general intelligence, starting from incremental modification of chimpanzees, on its first try."

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week311.html

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

#43

Post by owenmarshall »

malchow wrote: post #26
owenmarshall wrote: post #5

Once again sethf hits the nail on the head. The response is entirely up to us. I'm not personally optimistic: this country has a deeply held Puritanical work ethic, and even if we get past that we have a real nasty habit of not liking to give any government benefits to " those people ". But if we can get past that...

Question: What do you think "government benefits" are? As in, in what do they consist? What is their form? Of what stuff are they? Are they corporeal or spiritual? If corporeal, whence did they come? Who created them? Are they extracted from a mine? Built by a machine? Contributed by working men?

Fun soliloquy - I guess I'll play along.

> What do you think "government benefits" are?

Broadly speaking, the transfer of some good from the government to its citizens. Today we talk about it in terms of essentials (food, shelter, etc.) But in a world where most (if not all) tasks are handled by automatons, perhaps that's too reductive.

> Who created them? Are they extracted from a mine? Built by a machine? Contributed by working men?

Today you & I; perhaps tomorrow, not so much!

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

#44

Post by api »

If we were having economic growth, it wouldn't matter. Robots would replace mundane labor, allowing people to be allocated to more economically beneficial occupations.

The problem is that there is no economic growth to speak of outside a few sectors.

IMHO the concern over automation and tech in general is shifting the blame from where it actually belongs: conservative fiscal policy.

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

#45

Post by ch4s3 »

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…

> an emulated human

I don't buy it at all. Where is your evidence that convincing emulation of human emotion and empathy will exist any time in the next 100 years. Based on current technology and the pace of technological advancement that proposition just seems ridiculous.

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

#46

Post by throwaway9812 »

superuser2 wrote: post #36
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?

Are you serious? People work currently, because that's the way _society_ works, currently. We have convinced ourselves that everyone either works or reaps the benefits of having worked (which is why he "justly" owns the means of production).

However, your question is meaningless _if_ everything is produced by robots. Nobody will be able to charge for anything, because the justification for the current way wealth is distributed will be gone: Nobody works, or will have worked or can pretend to have worked: Charging for products will be difficult to justify. Therefore, things will be free and there is no need to "earn a living".

If the powers to be would have it otherwise, there _will_ be a revolution. Or people will move to a country where the robot dividend is fairly distributed.

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

#47

Post by owenmarshall »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #33
owenmarshall wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's not how I understood it, and not at all how I think he intended it to be read.

His statement is that a question that sets "automation means less jobs which is bad!" against "automation means more and better jobs which is good!" is improper. Automation will change the job landscape - that's an objective statement, and we've been living it so far.

Whether we make it a positive change and end up with Russell's "idle utopia" or a negative change and end up in some horrific dystopia is entirely up to our response.

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

#48

Post by AJ007 »

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…

The "top" of society will eventually have no purpose or strength. That may be sooner than even they expect. Technology commoditizes a lot of expert skills quickly even today. Some with great success are finding their skill sets are no longer valid much like kings and princes did in the past.

Start viewing the future as post-human. This is a future where humans are no longer the agents driving economic forces -- any more than other primates are today. Humans conceivably could live alongside sustainably. Or they may go extinct. James Lovelock's most recent book "A Rough Ride to the Future" presents the option of non-biological life continuing on an earth with a climate that no longer supports human life. He does so in the most optimistic way I have heard described. Optimistic, because he previously considered climate change likely to kill all life on earth.

All of this assumes that we do not have a "Great Filter" looming ahead where machine intelligence is totally incompatible with any form of replicating life.

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

#49

Post by schrodinger »

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…

I think that art would remain the thing that humans alone can produce - good tasting food (the production can be automated, but not generating a recipe) - music - entertainment...

In my theoretical future, capitalism will still exist, and we'll still trade and buy things from one another, we just won't need to do so for our basic needs, only for our entertainment desires...

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

#50

Post by sanxiyn »

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.

People may not work less (I don't think people are working more), but both working condition and nature of work greatly improved. That is, work is more enjoyable now than in the past.

According to some economists, this is the primary reason why work hours has not declined as expected.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/07/the...

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