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The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

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Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#51

Post by sanderjd »

Fricken wrote: post #28

Throughout the 20th century new technology has been steadily increasing the value of human labour, but some forms of human labour have increased more than others, and this imbalance has caused a market distortions. Technology has done a great deal to make railroad engineers more valuable for instance, because one guy could suddenly move hundreds of tons of goods. Used to be it took an army to do that. On the other ha…

> A plumber with a team of robots and an AI assistant will all of the sudden be able to do enough work to justify the cost of his labour.

This also implies that fewer individual plumber/robot/AI teams than the current number of plumbers. To offset that, we either need quite a bit more work at this level, or we need a rethink of the whole work-to-live system.

In the past it has always turned out that there are new kinds of jobs to be done. That may happen this time too. Things like living off of making YouTube videos are perhaps an early indicator of the direction we should be looking in. But it seems like most of the new models that are successful are based on ads and it seems to me that advertising-based business models can only ever make up a relatively small portion of the total economy.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#52

Post by xapata »

lhnz wrote: post #24
xapata wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large middle class hasn't been around all that long in the history of civilization. Maybe it's just a flash in the pan. My guess is that computer programming will be the new blue collar manufacturing job.

> In English-speaking countries, a blue-collar worker is > a working class person who performs non-agricultural > manual labour. Blue-collar work may involve skilled > or unskilled manufacturing, mining, sanitation, > custodial work, oil field work, construction, > mechanical maintenance, warehousing, firefighting, > technical installation and many other types of > physical work. > > In contrast, the white-collar wor…

> outside ...?

I meant "blue collar" as a metaphor for employing a large group of regular folks, not for outside work.

Manufacturing jobs in the middle of the 20th century were a core part of the economy. As robotics and other forms of automation replace more human activities, computer programming might become somewhat similar to the assembly-line job of the past. If not, I can't think of anything else that could plausibly take that role, in which case there would not be a large middle class.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#53

Post by natoliniak »

anigbrowl wrote: post #12
visarga wrote: post #4

So the unemployed would need to find a way to support themselves by their own work, by cooperation and by using automation as well. A combination of solar technology, robotics, AI and classic engineering could be a formula for self reliance.

Why not just wrest control of the means of production for themselves? The more concentrated the wealth, the easier it becomes to target it. When people see no other practical means of economic advancement revolutions tend to ensue.

yes, the old "specter of communism" is always hanging around. I don't think people will just rollover and cease to exist once they are deemed not needed by a society.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#54

Post by wmccullough »

It scares me too, but you know, I'm ready to embrace whatever comes next.

I've been thinking alot about this over the course of the last year. Say that enough things get automated that we have massive numbers of unemployed, how do we address that? Instead of dodging the question by exclaiming that it won't happen, we probably should address a much deeper and more fundamental question: Why does the value of a person come from their method of earning a living? We have to detach individual value from choice of career first.

Once we've done that, we really have a real question to answer, and it's deeply existential: Do we really want humankind's story to be about the majority of a population working at dead-end jobs just to buy food and water? Aren't we here for more? I for one don't buy the theory that we will self organize into makerspaces and become "creators". Creativity beyond survival is a luxury when life and death are on the line.

I don't have the answers, but I certainly have many questions. If I had to guess what would happen in the event that extreme A.I. automation puts us out of work, I'd suspect we will organize back into tribes to focus on subsistence. I've found that if you look at the history books, a centralized government isn't the best entity to take care of masses of unemployed people. In large enough countries, people would end up starving in the bread lines.

I think we need to really think about why we're here. Why are we so bent on using automation to complete the tasks of our shitty 9-5 lives instead of building a utopia? People are quick to say that we need to replace a money based economy, but that's too superficial a solution. Money is merely a shared myth used by us to trade our time and value for a symbol that we can use to prove our worth. Until we transfer where the "worth" of an individual comes from, we're going to be in this cycle.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#55

Post by goda90 »

problems wrote: post #36
goda90 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things freed up people to do more things that require mental instead of physical labor. Now that we're automating mental labor, what is left to shift to? Spiritual and emotional labor? I struggle to envision how we can continue to keep people prospering in a money based economy on just those kinds of work.

What makes you think we're at a peak of mental productivity? For the most part the mental labor we're automating isn't actual mental labor, but physical labor things which are difficult to make a computer do - like drive, cook or stitch.

But there are mental jobs being replaced. Finance, insurance, data entry, law, etc are all being disrupted. Some slower than others, but its more the cost of hiring the software developers to replace them with automated systems than it is the technology not being ready.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#56

Post by bijection »

zeteo wrote: post #49
philipkglass wrote: post #43

That 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…

> What of people receiving Social Security, pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents collected on real estate...? Not exactly the definition of the creative class is it?

Plenty of scientists, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers have backgrounds that would allow them to subsist with minimal work, and choose to do what they do anyway.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#57

Post by rick_perez »

dragontamer wrote: post #19
rick_perez wrote: post #11

We don't need AI to end the middle class. Services like Uber are replacing what used to be a stable job by fewer drivers with a job now done by many more drivers for peanuts. It's almost a way of taking an industry and redistributing the wealth.

> Services like Uber are replacing what used to be a stable job by fewer drivers with a job now done by many more drivers for peanuts. Right idea, wrong complaint. GPS is the automated tool that killed the Taxi. There was a time when it took specialized knowledge to know the layout of a city. GPS took away the one edge the Taxi-industry had... experience in driving and roads. Uber is just the first major company to t…

"GPS is the automated tool that killed the Taxi."

No, not really. When I travel to a new city, I always use a Taxi to get around. GPS actually helps out the taxi drivers because I don't need to sit there explaining exactly where to go. I can just tell them the address. In a foreign country, it's even better: Just give them a business card or piece of paper with the address on it.

"Uber is just the first major company to take advantage of cheap GPS technology."

Uber is the first major company to avoid all of the taxi unions and the medallion systems and hire any driver off the street for what amounts to some extra beer money for the drivers.

It's really convenient and nice for consumers, but guts the industry of jobs that could actually earn someone a real living.

"the Taxicab industry became an endangered species."

Again, no it didn't. I'm not sure how much traveling you have done but when you need to get somewhere on time, Trains and Subways don't really cut it. You need to take a taxi.

Unless we have an instant form of travel without cars, we will always have a need for taxis.

Uber did, however, show us that when unions are in place and create a monopoly in an industry, they really have no incentive to actually make things better for the consumer.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#58

Post by bad_user »

problems wrote: post #36
goda90 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things freed up people to do more things that require mental instead of physical labor. Now that we're automating mental labor, what is left to shift to? Spiritual and emotional labor? I struggle to envision how we can continue to keep people prospering in a money based economy on just those kinds of work.

What makes you think we're at a peak of mental productivity? For the most part the mental labor we're automating isn't actual mental labor, but physical labor things which are difficult to make a computer do - like drive, cook or stitch.

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 :-)

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#59

Post by _m8fo »

Even though I am considered 'skilled labor', I hardly consider myself so skilled to be making the incredible AI machines that will be the ones to take over the jobs (in comparison to the competition, anyway). As for "less skilled folks" like myself, here's an abridged list of things you can do (in additional to software) to start hedging your bet against AI.

- Real estate (Landlord): I'd suggest you save money and start buying some property. Dump some sweat equity into certain markets and you may have something here. AI can never beat the ultimate constraint -- land.

- Environmental science: AI is great, but I doubt computer vision and robotics will become good enough to replace foresters and the like anytime soon. If you live in a wooded area, it may be worth it to start investigating it. Plus, it's healthy to walk around in nature anyway. Double whammy.

- Teacher: It's unlikely any teaching will be done by an AI. Behavior management in particular is difficult enough with a human, let alone an AI. When an AI robot is teaching our students directly, we have bigger problems on our hand.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#60

Post by crazy2be »

philipkglass wrote: post #43

That 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…

It does come up?

In the case of pensions and royalties, it is wealth from prior work, so it's not really in the same category morally (for a culture that believes in the virtue of work).

Social security and inherited wealth definately do have a sort of stigma attached to them though, precisely because of the lifestyles that "trust fund children" tend to live, and because the poor are already stigmatized in general. The structure of social security makes real problems here too, where people can't get jobs without losing their social security.

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