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Brain work may be going the way of manual work

economist.com

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Re: Brain work may be going the way of manual work

#71

Post by rtkwe »

kybernetyk wrote: post #65
rtkwe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the singularity also includes post-scarcity for at least basic survival needs. The logic being when robots & AIs take over all the jobs we can increase the output to a point where goods are exceedingly abundant. Granted that path involves quite a bit of faith that there's some reason to provide, but it's not terribly unreasonable if a bit idealistic.

> The logic being when robots & AIs take over all the jobs we can increase the output to a point where goods are exceedingly abundant. That or the AI decides to exterminate us. In both cases jobs won't be a major concern.

Yeah that's always an option for how this could go. I prefer to be positive cause if a post-singularity AI wants to kill me there's not much I can do.

Re: Brain work may be going the way of manual work

#72

Post by conroe64 »

rtkwe wrote: post #69
conroe64 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A central planning AI to impose fairness and the right to basic survival could only come about and remain standing if there was enough support for it from those already in power to allow this. How would you suppose this would come about? The future will hold a very different scenario than a typical first-world country today where the populous actually produces useful work. As a leader, instead you have a population w…

People have been trying to fairly distribute resources to give everyone a basic standard living for ages. It's the basic idea behind welfare, socialism, and communism, there's a precedent for trying to do exactly what I described as the CPAI.

So why do you think that an AI could do any better? You really think it's too complicated for people to figure out how distribute wealth fairly enough and that's why it failed? All an AI tasked with making things fair for everybody can do is create a plan. It cannot execute it, it cannot enforce it.

Why would people follow it? Why would some rich and powerful guy with connections forgo all his power to some CPAI that was set up? How would he maintain his ego when the world no longer shakes from his every footstep? How would he repay all the favors he made to those that got him there?

AI is just a tool, like the gun, the ship or the railroad. It's not some panacea that is going to protect human nature from itself.

Re: Brain work may be going the way of manual work

#73

Post by rtkwe »

conroe64 wrote: post #72
rtkwe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been trying to fairly distribute resources to give everyone a basic standard living for ages. It's the basic idea behind welfare, socialism, and communism, there's a precedent for trying to do exactly what I described as the CPAI.

So why do you think that an AI could do any better? You really think it's too complicated for people to figure out how distribute wealth fairly enough and that's why it failed? All an AI tasked with making things fair for everybody can do is create a plan. It cannot execute it, it cannot enforce it. Why would people follow it? Why would some rich and powerful guy with connections forgo all his power to some CPAI that…

I think one of the reason it failed in the past was a mixture of corruption and incomplete technology. There just wasn't the tech in place for things to be efficiently planned accurately and efficiently.

Re: Brain work may be going the way of manual work

#74

Post by greenyoda »

Sven7 wrote: post #45
3pt14159 wrote: post #2

No they will not. The amount of effort required to shrink real knowledge worker jobs is astronomical compared to simply driving a car. After the singularity, fine. But even that will require a massive, massive amount of work. The low hanging fruit for increasing knowledge work output is in Gattaca not AI.

You don't need AI to see the number of programmers required on a project to exponentially shrink. Five years ago to build a simple video chat you needed a team of hardcore programmers with expertise in video, audio, networking, real time protocols and telecom. Today it takes a couple of lines of javascript through WebRTC.

But aren't users demanding more and more features from software as time goes on, and won't this added size and complexity create additional work for programmers even though the stuff we did in the previous release is now easier to do? For example, compare the amount of software that went into a phone ten years ago with the gigabytes of software that sits on a smartphone today, or the complexity of the UI on a phone ten years ago vs. today. Not to mention the increased functionality of the servers at the back-ends of all these apps.

Also, if you're starting a project from scratch, you can use the latest and most streamlined technology. But if you're supporting a large code base (millions of lines of code) and adding features to it, you can't just suddenly re-write all your code to use the latest techniques. Also, you may be locked into a technology by your customers. For example, in the enterprise software space, lots of customers have a huge investment in Java application servers on which all their software runs, and if you want to compete in that space, it's easier to sell them a Java-based system than it is to convince them to install and learn to support a Ruby-based system just to run your product. And there's probably much more code (and programmers) in enterprise software -- think of all the software that supports banks, insurance companies, hospitals, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. -- than in the start-up world. I don't think AI is going to make a dent in that huge, complex pile of legacy software any time soon.

Re: Brain work may be going the way of manual work

#75

Post by Sven7 »

greenyoda wrote: post #74
Sven7 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need AI to see the number of programmers required on a project to exponentially shrink. Five years ago to build a simple video chat you needed a team of hardcore programmers with expertise in video, audio, networking, real time protocols and telecom. Today it takes a couple of lines of javascript through WebRTC.

But aren't users demanding more and more features from software as time goes on, and won't this added size and complexity create additional work for programmers even though the stuff we did in the previous release is now easier to do? For example, compare the amount of software that went into a phone ten years ago with the gigabytes of software that sits on a smartphone today, or the complexity of the UI on a phone t…

Look at state govt employees in the US. A major portion of this labor force is involved in managing data. Even if you take just the "knowledge workers", the number still would be in the hundreds of thousands range. Not counting outsourcing.

Facebook manages the data of 1 billion people, spanning some 200 countries with 5000 employees. No great AI involved.

Glad you bought up enterprise, most of those programmers now come from Indian IT companies. The only sector still employing american programmers is defence. Now if you are right and all those hospitals, pharma companies, insurance companies, banks etc require more and more features to be built for their customers then why do we see this

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/its-time-to-move-on-as-tec...

Why do we see Infosys tanking after almost a decade of being a darling of the stock market.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/infosys-investors-b...

Of course its all not happening overnight, there are some legacy systems that are still too expensive to replace but it is happening.

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