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Replacement.ai

replacement.ai

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Re: Replacement.ai

#681

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dzjkb wrote: post #285
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main concerns: 1. When such wealth is possible through autonomous means, how can the earth survive such unprecedented demands on its natural resources? 2. Should I believe that someone with more wealth (and as such, more power) than I have would not use that power to overwhelm me? Isn't my demand on resources only going to get in their way? Why would they allow me to draw on resources as well? 3. It seems like the…

These concerns are already perfectly applicable to the current state of the world, no? More planetary boundaries keep getting crossed due to unnecessarily large resource usage, the poorest people don't have access (even though they could) to the resources necessary to survive...

That's exactly why I'm concerned. It seems to me that we will only exacerbate the problems we have today, not alleviate them. We would need dramatic breakthroughs in energy technologies, but also... I don't know, some means of acquiring raw resources which doesn't strain the planet.

Re: Replacement.ai

#682

Post by steve_adams_86 »

lateforwork wrote: post #238
beeflet wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What use is human skill, abilities, reputation, and status when human labor has been totally outmoded machines? Trekonomics seems like a totally backwards way of approaching post-scarcity by starting with a fictional setting. You might as well prepare yourself for the Star Wars economy.

Humans have an innate desire to be loved and respected, and this won’t change even if jobs cease to exist.

There are billions of people who essentially live in varying degrees of servitude today, and they desire love and respect. Other humans ensure they stay in servitude, though. Why would that be any different in the future? Why wouldn't it be worse?

Re: Replacement.ai

#683

Post by brap »

vanviegen wrote: post #517
franga2000 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I put "the government" in quotes. The parent post was saying "the government" should just fix the underlying problem instead of showing AI progress. This has the same problem - no government can do that alone. So it's either "we all science ourselves out of a job and die from uncontrolled capitalism" or "we try to do something about the uncontrolled capitalism and in the meantime, everyone else ke…

Not necessarily. You can also attempt to disconnect your economy from AI-driven economies. Yes, tariffs. :-) That path is hard and risky (are AI countries eclipsing us in military power?), but probably more realistic than hoping for global cooperation.

So basically being Amish

Re: Replacement.ai

#684

Post by strogonoff »

thunky wrote: post #630
strogonoff wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Robots coming for your jobs” is a valid argument against robots even if they can do those jobs better and faster, under two assumptions: 1) humans benefit from having jobs and 2) human benefit is the end goal. Both are fairly uncontroversial: many humans not only benefit from jobs but in fact often depend on jobs for their livelihoods, and (2) should be self-evident. This can change if the socioeconomic system is qu…

> 1) humans benefit from having jobs and 2) human benefit is the end goal. There's no law of nature saying that a human must work 40 hours per week or starve. The current dependence on work is a consequence, not a goal.

Having to pay bills is part of current socioeconomic reality. Deriving satisfaction from being a useful member of society and social ties is part of human psychological nature.

Working on replacing human jobs with robots has two concrete outcomes, 1) impacting people’s ability to have jobs that pay bills and often create a meaning their lives and 2) concentrating wealth in technological elites (who run those robots), and a theoretical outcome of 3) helping humanity in some way.

If we are acting in good will, we should dedicate effort to addressing the concrete impact (1) at least as much as to working on (3). Most of us are or are adjacent to tech elites and benefit from (2), which means we are individually incentivized to not care about (1), so it requires reiterating every now and then. If we are purely thinking of (3), we are not much better than dictators and their henchmen that caused famines and other catastrophes justifying it with some sort of long-term utilitarian calculus.

Re: Replacement.ai

#685

Post by gaul_bladder »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #22
sincerely wrote: post #9

I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem

Manual labor was replaced with factory labor, factory labor replaced with knowledge work. If knowledge work is replaced with AI, what do we go to then? Not to mention that the efficiency gains of the modern tech industry are not even remotely distributed fairly. The logical extreme conclusion of an AI company would be where the CEO, Founder, 100% owner, and sole employee coordinates some underling AIs to run the enti…

> what do we go to then?

You’ll waste away for a little while in some sort of slum and then eventually you’ll head to the Soylent green factory, but not for a job. After that problem solved!

Re: Replacement.ai

#686

Post by citizenpaul »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #346
citizenpaul wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> post scarcity mindset A total shift of human mentality. Humans have shown time and again there is only one way we ever get there. A long winding road paved with bodies.

I searched some day and there is enough food to end world hunger once or (twice I know for a fact once, but I had a reddit article which said twice but I am not pulling that source but you get it) > Less than 5% of the US’ military budget could end world hunger for a year. [1] My friend we live in 1984, when the main character discovers that eurasia and others have enough food / resources to help everybody out but th…

Yeah. Desire and distribution problems.

Despite the cynical pessimistic tone of my comment I don't think its necessarily that humans are bad. Humans do bad things but also we still do better than any other lifeform we know of at helping each other at our own expense.

I don't think there is a good answer the same things that kept us alive as a species are what are now holding us back from becoming something better. I thinks humans will get there but like I said. Mountains of unnecessary preventable deaths first.

Re: Replacement.ai

#687

Post by account42 »

TechSquidTV wrote: post #86

Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is how we got to the future. So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and n…

The problem with that is that having all the robots also makes it easy to control the government.

Re: Replacement.ai

#688

Post by account42 »

JimDabell wrote: post #336
TechSquidTV wrote: post #86

Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is how we got to the future. So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and n…

> robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. Taking work away from people is practically the definition of technology. We invent things to reduce the effort needed to do things. Eliminating work is a good thing, that’s why inventing things is so popular! What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant, meaning we get more done for the same amount of effort performed b…

Hi, let me be the first to welcome into our millennium. Things have changed significantly since the 70s you seem to be used to: https://anticap.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/fig...

Re: Replacement.ai

#689

Post by dsign »

tomp wrote: post #592
IgorPartola wrote: post #564

Let’s take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let’s say we do get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let’s postulate that this becomes the norm and let’s say that alo…

> If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits You don't understand. Almost nobody actually thinks about this in the right way, but it's actually basic economics. Salt. We used to fight wars for salt, but now it's literally given away for free (in restaurants). If "robots produce so much value" then all that value w…

This is very well thought-out. But if regulation has such power, shouldn't we find better ways to use it?

Yeah, I know, it's very hard to craft good legislation. In fact, there's this problem of agency: the will to have things be a certain way is not always in the humans, or does not always emanate from the direct needs of the people. Many of the problems of modern capitalism are because there's emergent agency from non-human things, i.e. corporations. In the case of US, agency emerging from the corporate world has purportedly sequestered democracy. But there also agency emerging from frenzied political parties that define themselves as opposition to each other with a salted no-mans-land in the middle. This emerging agency thing is not new; it existed before in other institutions, e.g. organized religion. In any case, the more things there are vying for power, the less power people have to govern themselves in a way that is fair.

With AI, there's a big chance we will at least super-charge non-human agency, and that if we can avoid the AIs themselves developing agency of their own.

Re: Replacement.ai

#690

Post by Balinares »

Ray20 wrote: post #670
pydry wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland. America isnt really a democracy it's a plutocracy.

Just for example. When the elite drives all their opponents into poverty and sends them to rot in prison for the slightest outcry, that's anything but democracy. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/swiss-lgbtq-groups-...

The way real democracies punish bad people is really upsetting to bad people.
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