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100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

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Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#51

Post by blagie »

samiv wrote: post #31

The robots as most people might expect will not take over. The robots will be the software that will slowly start to replace knowledge workers or anyone who works with a computer. If you conduct your work on a computer someone is already planning to replace you with software. Think about that for a second. Incidentally also the knowledge workers are typically the higher income classes in a society. When their jobs st…

We seem to have no mechanisms to "rethink."

Market dynamics + personal ambitions are driving change.

At the same time, we have no means of popular revolution. Drones are automating war, and LLMs can monitor literally all conversations. Bottom-up revolution is futile. To the contrary, it's likely whomever produces the best drones could pull of a corporate revolution.

Market dynamics here centralize power and lead to a natural monopoly. That's perhaps better than competition, since competition pushes for moving fast, which means safety goes by the wayside.

Carpenters and plumbers will be obsoleted by robots too. Robot AI is maybe 5-10 years behind LLMs.

OpenAI was supposed to be the driving force behind fixing this, but it sold out, and is now building Skynet instead of preventing it.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#52

Post by ashoeafoot »

whatever1 wrote: post #7

The machines will have owners; likely, these owners will be very few due to the concentration of wealth that they will have accumulated by the time we reach full automation. So, probably a guy will own all the agricultural automation, another one the warehouse automation, another one the software, etc. Then there will also be the resource owners (probably states or big landlords). Since resources are finite (land, mi…

society will nor be stable long enough to see this

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#53

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

DoctorDabadedoo wrote: post #48
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not suggesting it is easy. I am saying, it is a lot more likely now than 10 years ago.

I believe some problems in the field are now easier, we haven't made a dent on the truly hard ones, IMO. source: I work in the field.

I am not in the field, but I am trying to branch out a little so it helps to talk with someone who is.

LLMs probably help the same way they help with other stuff. They lower the barrier of entry for newcomers ( good and bad at the same time ).

That said, what are the current hard problems? I don't want to derail the thread, but this is of personal interest.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#54

Post by ashoeafoot »

scrappyjoe wrote: post #34
Wilsoniumite wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote about this a bit on my blog [1] but to add to this idea, > Maybe prostitution to the owners will be the only available job. Pre industrial revolution, labor was in a sense cheaper than it was during the industrial revolution, and one genuinely interesting set of professions that existed then was house servants. Butlers, maids, cooks, under butlers and so on. It would not be inconceivable to see the return of…

I suppose that house servants performed two functions - menial tasks, and emotional labour. Competence at both was essential. A house servant who was great at making beds but super annoying or had no emotional intelligence probably didn't last very long. The menial tasks component will probably be automated away. Which leaves the emotional labour. Put another way, our job will be to be liked by the people with power.…

They were appliances. a kitchenaid at the farm of my great uncle did one job.. that of a kitchenaid. whisk and kneed all day+ gossip

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#55

Post by Cumpiler69 »

thrance wrote: post #49
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose we do the seizing? Historically that never had good results, because the people who want to seize the wealth and the power are exactly those who shouldn't have it and be trusted with it, so you're exchanging one set of oligarchs with another set of despots.

It's hard to make predictions for such a hypothetical future, but let me try anyway. If we ever reach 100% unemployment, the working class (in which I inlcude all that depend on wages to live) will lose its only leverage in today's world: its labor. This is bound to make the situation very dire, very quickly for the vast majority of the population (>99%). I see only two solutions: * Either the owners push for some ki…

How will you hang the billionaires? It's not like they'll live next door to you instead of on their Billionaire Island with private security.

The billionaires can always do what they've always done and pay half the poor people to shoot and oppress the other half if things don't go their way. As long as you keep the people with guns well paid, you're good.

Dividing the lower classes and pitting them against each other has always been successful in conquering them and preventing them from uniting and rising up again the ruling elite because collectively, people are stupid and easy to manipulate against their own interests, like cattle.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#56

Post by scrappyjoe »

9rx wrote: post #41
scrappyjoe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that house servants performed two functions - menial tasks, and emotional labour. Competence at both was essential. A house servant who was great at making beds but super annoying or had no emotional intelligence probably didn't last very long. The menial tasks component will probably be automated away. Which leaves the emotional labour. Put another way, our job will be to be liked by the people with power.…

> our job will be to be liked by the people with power. So, for most people, no change from the job they are already doing?

I approve of this implication

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#57

Post by scrappyjoe »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #54
scrappyjoe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that house servants performed two functions - menial tasks, and emotional labour. Competence at both was essential. A house servant who was great at making beds but super annoying or had no emotional intelligence probably didn't last very long. The menial tasks component will probably be automated away. Which leaves the emotional labour. Put another way, our job will be to be liked by the people with power.…

They were appliances. a kitchenaid at the farm of my great uncle did one job.. that of a kitchenaid. whisk and kneed all day+ gossip

I'm not sure if you are confirming or rebutting my argument. In the future, no whisking. Gossip better be saucy if you want to stick around.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#58

Post by kelahcim »

DaveMcMartin wrote: post #22

I also have this pessimism. That's why I'm pivoting to hardware and embedded programming.

I, sharing the same feeling, have taken more drastic step. Instead of changing a specialisation within IT I have recently graduated in Psychology.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#59

Post by franktankbank »

Wilsoniumite wrote: post #30
whatever1 wrote: post #7

The machines will have owners; likely, these owners will be very few due to the concentration of wealth that they will have accumulated by the time we reach full automation. So, probably a guy will own all the agricultural automation, another one the warehouse automation, another one the software, etc. Then there will also be the resource owners (probably states or big landlords). Since resources are finite (land, mi…

I wrote about this a bit on my blog [1] but to add to this idea, > Maybe prostitution to the owners will be the only available job. Pre industrial revolution, labor was in a sense cheaper than it was during the industrial revolution, and one genuinely interesting set of professions that existed then was house servants. Butlers, maids, cooks, under butlers and so on. It would not be inconceivable to see the return of…

Maids already are common in barely upper middle class homes. They don't live there but.

Re: 100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)

#60

Post by snakeyjake »

gpderetta wrote: post #47
jokoon wrote: post #24

If AI can barely replace car drivers or truck drivers, I think developers will unfortunately have to keep writing code. Of course AI made progress in the language realm with chatGPT, but I don't see any advance in the realm of consciousness, general AI, emotions, etc. There was some recent, small progress where the brain of a fly was mapped. But I don't see transverse research made between cognition, psychology, neur…

We have little reason to believe that intellectual jobs are harder to automate than physical jobs. Consider the Moravec's paradox ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox ).

It depends.

Many "intellectual" jobs build things that have never existed before and I have never seen an automation for something that has never existed before.

I have also not yet seen a model create something new that was not already contained within the dataset it was trained on. An astronaut on a horse is only superficially original and does not count as "new".

Of course, I am not omniscient so that may have already occurred but there is so much bullshittery in the "AI" (it's not I) space that any claim that it has occurred should be quarantined into the "likely a lie" zone of of one's brain until there is overwhelming evidence in the amount needed to convince an astronaut who has been in orbit and gazed upon the Earth that the planet is flat.

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