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The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

economist.com

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Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#41

Post by pacala »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #22
moonchrome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>eventually full AIs At that point there will be no corporations or anything else related to our society because it will break the premise society is built on - that we are better off working with each other - someone in control of such AI doesn't need anyone else - it's impossible to guess what they would do with it but a logical choice would be to eliminate potential threats (ie. anyone who can develop similar tech…

People tend to bloviate a bit about how the first person or group to build and train a "seed AGI" would have "godlike" power, but what they forget is that given godlike power , there is no reason to be selfish or psychopathic. Most human selfishness and greed comes from incentive gradients and competition traps resulting from the systems we have to survive in. Once you have nonhuman but human-equivalent-or-greater in…

I wish I could be as optimistic. But AGIs are physical beings with computational limitations that run on energy. The Sun can produce so much over a given period of time. It's not hard to imagine a competition trap involving AGIs, each trying to get as much resources as possible to increase its capacity and crush the competition.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#42

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pacala wrote: post #41
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to bloviate a bit about how the first person or group to build and train a "seed AGI" would have "godlike" power, but what they forget is that given godlike power , there is no reason to be selfish or psychopathic. Most human selfishness and greed comes from incentive gradients and competition traps resulting from the systems we have to survive in. Once you have nonhuman but human-equivalent-or-greater in…

I wish I could be as optimistic. But AGIs are physical beings with computational limitations that run on energy. The Sun can produce so much over a given period of time. It's not hard to imagine a competition trap involving AGIs, each trying to get as much resources as possible to increase its capacity and crush the competition.

I would hope artificial agents are intelligent enough to realize that erasing their own utility functions to grab resources has very low utility! Cooperation is a high expected-utility strategy for the mean agent, which is why it evolved in the first place.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#43

Post by paulddraper »

walshemj wrote: post #37
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Is it the chaotic environment? The temperature extremes? The unpredictability of each situation? All those are strong reasons TO automate firefighting. Machines can function better in heat/smoke/violent structural collapse situations. They can make objective analysis when their own mortality is not an issue. Nobody made money betting against advances in computing.

But to replace a fire fighter would require order of magnitude discoveries in several fields you would effectively need true AI and a self powered robot with as good strength and endurance as a human.

Though I'm not sure it needs to be completely automated. You don't see robots writing news articles, but a researcher and Google are more productive than several researchers.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier »

walshemj wrote: post #37
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Is it the chaotic environment? The temperature extremes? The unpredictability of each situation? All those are strong reasons TO automate firefighting. Machines can function better in heat/smoke/violent structural collapse situations. They can make objective analysis when their own mortality is not an issue. Nobody made money betting against advances in computing.

But to replace a fire fighter would require order of magnitude discoveries in several fields you would effectively need true AI and a self powered robot with as good strength and endurance as a human.

Those things are improving every week. Self-powered robots will exceed human strength and endurance in a few years with steadily improving battery power/kg (metal-air batteries are already better than gas-powered engines). AI for autonomous robots is the current Darpa challenge. And for firefighting, the automation doesn't have to extend as far as life-or-death decisions; those can be made remotely.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#45

Post by eli_gottlieb »

glesica wrote: post #30
grandalf wrote: post #28

If unemployment ever becomes a problem we can simply outlaw the wheat combine, which will open up hundreds of thousands of jobs harvesting grain manually.

I hope you were being sarcastic... but in case you weren't, why would we ever create meaningless work instead of just giving people money for pursuing whatever makes them happy? A basic income guarantee seems like a much more reasonable solution than "put everyone to work digging holes and filling them in again".

Many people, for some strange reason, believe they would rather see the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#47

Post by zo1 »

danmaz74 wrote: post #3

Very interesting analysis. But they don't consider at all one very relevant change that happened during the last 30 years in most wealthy economies, especially the USA: That the taxation of the rich and the highest-earners in general was massively lowered. This contributed a lot to the concentration of wealth and capital in fewer hands.

Your point has one tacit component that you failed to mention. If what you say is true, then before "taxation of the rich and the highest-earners in general was massively lowered" occurred, the concentration of wealth stayed constant. So, if we've now reduced the transfer from the rich to the power a-la the taxes you mention, then that must mean that before, and now after, wealth has always been naturally (if you want to use that term) flowing towards the already rich.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#48

Post by scrollaway »

ExpiredLink wrote: post #13
josephg wrote: post #4

There's a great 15 minute video by CGP Grey introducing the same set of concepts that technology will contribute to unemployment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU Its a bit pop-sciency, but its very approachable and well explained.

It sounds like the technology forecasts in the 50ies and 60ies but with a pessimistic instead of an optimistic undertone.

CGPGrey himself says the video is neither pessimistic nor optimistic: it's neutral. The video talks about something that has started happening and is almost certain to keep happening at ever faster paces.

It takes some effort to start thinking out of the box, seeing things from a much farther point of view and realize none of this is bad. The human race keeps advancing, progressing, and very often the leaps we make from decade to decade radically change the way our society functions. Cars changed society just as smartphones changed society. These changes force us to adapt and while sometimes it costs people their job, there just isn't that much room for these concerns, as cold as that may sound.

For example, digital distribution cost thousands of people their jobs in retail. Yet are we arguing digital distribution is a bad thing? Only those whose current income depends on the status quo not changing ever really make that point.

I haven't looked at the stats, but I'm certain that cars cost thousands of people in the horse industry their jobs as well.

This is very parallel to the "Would you sacrifice yourself to save 10 people?" moral question. In other words: "Would you sacrifice your own comfort to improve the lives of others?".

And I'm not judging. I've never been in the situation where I had to make the choice... but if I were, I would have very little actual input on the outcome. Nor should I.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#49

Post by zo1 »

danmaz74 wrote: post #6
vixen99 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK in the 70s had a tax rate of 95% thus encouraging payment of much higher salaries to make it worthwhile for talented staff. If the tax rate is thereafter lowered to something sensible then the differentials are going to be significant. Quite a number of higher earners now have an effective tax rate of 60% which is not exactly low - but that's in the UK.

95% is crazy, but today there are lots of multi-millionaire CEOs who as a percentage of their income pay less taxes than their secretaries...

I see no problem with that, that looks perfectly legal. Democracy and legislation has decided that certain forms of income are to be taxed at a lower rate than others. And the CEO does lots of that "other" form of income, hence the lower rate.

Why, what problem do you have with Democracy, err, I mean this tax-rate?

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#50

Post by selmnoo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #46
doctorstupid wrote: post #20

Of course, the other side of the coin says that there are too many people.

For the planet, sure. But for economic analysis its irrelevant. All metrics are per-capita.

> For the planet, sure. But for economic analysis its irrelevant.

No, for economic analysis overpopulation is very relevant. Maybe not in the extremely short term, but in the long term when overpopulation strains the finite supply of goods like energy and raw material, this becomes very relevant. In addition to the fact the reversing man-made climate change would also take incredible capital and resources to pull off, it's actually probably one of the biggest things to be seen in economic analysis.

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