6 ms·

AI will create 'useless class' of humans

32 points by sidko 10y ago

yehosef 10y ago
Typo - "AI will expand 'useless class' of humans"
- dalke 10y ago
  Indeed. We have little need now for elevator operators. But 100 years ago, when steam, electricity, and wide-spread mechanization of the previous decades had brought huge advantages in efficiency, the thought was that there would be increased leisure, and the time to pursue the activities which make us more human, like friendship, raising children, hobbies, and more serious avocations. Or watching TV, playing video games, and getting high. This isn't the "useless class" but the "leisure class." Of course, quoting from the article: > Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. “I choose this very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not from a moral viewpoint,” If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    > If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want. The term "useless" is inherently relative. The universe does not have a natural position on "usefulness". So yes, you do get to make it to mean whatever you want it to be. That is not a basis to criticize anyone - any framework you choose to set a basis is itself arbitrary. Unless you believe in some "higher purpose", where all discussion ceases to be meaningful because nothing can be proven and you can claim whatever you want, and the loudest and/or strongest "wins".
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    It was a common idea in the 70s too. All it takes is a bout of inflation to kill the idea that we've run out of things for people to do. It'll happen to the United States if the flow of underpriced Chinese goods dries up and the US needs to start making its own goods.
scandox 10y ago
Jack Williamson attempted a kind of exposition of these issues in The Humanoids (1948), the follow up to his classic story With Folded Hands (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands). What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical whatsoever...unless they wish to. Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way first. Fun times.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
partycoder 10y ago
It's not that they will be useless, it's just that their use does not make financial sense. AI replaces humans when: - AI is able to perform a new human intelligence task - Perform at a human level of reliability - Perform at a cost-effective level - It is wrapped in form of a product or service that makes it easy to distribute and deploy
hnarayanan 10y ago
People of leisure!
exit 10y ago
it could also unleash a lot of currently stupidly-employed people to do what they'd actually excel at.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Do we really need more of them?
decayy 10y ago
Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will take away human jobs. The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  There is no law of economics that says the value of labor has to be above survival, let alone minimum wage. When cars replaced horses, most horses didn't get new jobs. They literally became worth less than the cost of feeding them, and were slaughtered. Near future AI will make the majority of humans basically worthless. There isn't much left that people can do, and computers can't. Sure maybe high intelligence jobs like engineers and programmers are safe (for now...), but most people can't become programmers or engineers.
  - lgas 10y ago
    Do you have any citation on the assertions that the invention of cars resulted in the slaughter of many horses? I've spent a fair amount of time googling but can't find anything about it.
  - collyw 10y ago
    Economics is an entirely human construction. Such laws can be made as easily as the rest of the economic system and it makes sense.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.
  - lisivka 10y ago
    What will happen to owner(s) of AI? Will they survive? :-)
jimmcslim 10y ago
Always worth linking to Marshall Brain's "Manna" with a title like that; http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
exratione 10y ago
Comparative advantage isn't abolished just because the advantage is large. Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved. A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Comparative advantage only works if you have something of value to trade. If AIs automates away your job, then you no longer have anything of value to trade with.
  - exratione 10y ago
    Your comment rather illustrates my point.
andrewclunn 10y ago
Seems to me that a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. The other weakness of this argument is that in order to perform many of the human jobs, the AI will need a robotic body. Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc. > Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs. A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
collyw 10y ago
Management structures in existing companies have already created this in some places I have worked.
dineshp2 10y ago
> But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to summon a class of eternally useless human beings. Can't help but notice the sensationalist tone. The author also seems to have a pessimistic view of the future and the role of humans in it. Certain roles may be replaced by AI and humans will move on to do different things, but that does not mean it will render those humans useless. What exactly will humans move on to do is of course an open ended question, but if history is any indication, it won't be bleak as the author predicts.
tumbas 10y ago
there are worrying amout of people that say things ridicilous as this. It would not be a problem if they were put in it's place by being treated as, pardon my language, stupid fucktards disqusting to talk to. Instad these people are treated as forward thinkers that should be listened to. It reminds me a lot of eugenics. In the US that was cutting edge science 100 years ago until germans wanted to implement it. Just like homosexuality is natural is science now. When people stop distinguishing between left or right and start taking Vatican for not terrorist organisation and something respectable then bad stuff happen. It is bad when society is not imune to people like this.
agentultra 10y ago
These screeds have one grave misunderstanding: that AI can compete with a human. It's like apples to oranges. Alpha Go may have beat the best human player in the world but you can't ask it to fold the laundry or how it felt about Angela's Ashes. I think we'll be able to optimize away boring, repetitive jobs and tasks that require vast numerical and statistical quantities. And that's a good thing. We'll just need to adapt our economic models away from the indentured servitude to the Protestant Ethic.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  AlphaGo is only the beginning. The same tech in alphaGo has recently caused massive improvements in speech recognition, machine vision, translation, NLP, etc. It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry", and be able to control a robot body to do it. We've had robotic tech for a long time. But only right now is the AI catching up to make use of it.
  - agentultra 10y ago
    These are all highly specialized tasks. Useful, but not general enough to replace a conscious human being. > It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry" Who the hell wants to spend their life folding laundry anyway? Some people do only because that is what their circumstances dictate. There's no reason they should if we have the means to alleviate them of such trivial "work." It's my understanding that we already have these devices. They're slow as molasses but the efficiency of not having a human do it is great. Good. We're all better off.
- terhechte 10y ago
  Something I never see answered in these discussions: What are the previous workers to do, those whose jobs were so simple that a properly configured AI can perform it faster and better. Every other job that they would be capable of is just as likely to be replaced by another properly configured machine. If every possible tasks a person would be capable of handling can be solved by a specific machine in a better way then what should these people do? I am not talking about engineers or white collar workers. I'm talking about people who were unfortunately born with what I'd for a lack of a better word call "low IQ" though I know that the term and the science behind it is highly flawed. Currently, those persons are in the vast minority. Only a small percentile of the human population falls into this category. But as AI gets smarter, year over year, the minimal job requirement will grow. I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.
Tistel 10y ago
I am a programmer. Its totally possible for this to happen. But, bugs will buy us time. We are too stupid (for now, a new language or proof system could change this) to write good enough software to destroy ourselves. Also energy efficiency. Organic life is crazy efficient at turning food into work (If you have access to abundant clean water). Give a person a happy meal and they can walk for days. A robot of the same size/weight/strength will kill it's battery or exhaust it's fossil fuel tank in a few hours. The last programmer putting the finishing touches on artificial general intelligence (the one that will put programmers out of work too) just needs to make sure "love the meat bags who made you" is the second last instruction. The last instruction is don't alter the second last instruction. Personally, I would enjoy hiking the west coast trail, drawing and painting more. I will miss coding through. I love the feeling when it finally work the way you want it to. The point being: if we are smart enough to automate all the jobs, we are probably smart enough to provide food/healthcare to everyone for free (basic living wage or whatever). It's not the end of world. There are lots of ways to spend your time.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  First, read the article before commenting. This is about automation replacing jobs, not the singularity. Second energy efficiency isn't a big deal. A robot army that runs on petrol is still scary. Energy efficiency has not kept machines from beating humans physically, at all. Lastly, it's impossible to code "love the meat bags who made you". AI's do not take English language instructions. You need to specify exactly what you mean by "love" and "meat bags", etc, and not make any mistakes at all.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DarkContinent 10y ago
Humans with fewer skills than the elite were not pushed out of the employment market by the invention of dishwashers, laundry machines, or vacuum cleaners. The invention of AI is hardly different.
- terhechte 10y ago
  A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different, you just train it on the task like you'd train a human worker and that's it. No need to invent a new machine.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.
    - vinceguidry 10y ago
      Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.
      - thomasahle 10y ago
        > There's no point to AI without us. But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.
        vinceguidry 10y ago
        If AI is truly useful, then it'll be put to use for everybody. Technology has been dicking around with our social classes for thousands of years. You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in the first place. You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal. Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Udik 10y ago
I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to produce humans. A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for love and raise kids. If the technology is actually possible, there simply can't be any space left for old style, flesh and blood humans in the economy.
- sigkill 10y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Another way of looking at it is, when the cars came, the carriages were obsolete. Sure, the drivers may have reskilled to some other vocation but what about the horse? In this situation, we are the horses, and the AI is the car.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  When this happens, costs for virtually everything will more or less go to zero, because we can make humans to make more humans to make everything else in our society that costs money. Try to imagine a society where virtually everything is free...visualize walking around and getting free coffee from Starbucks, free rides from Uber, free meals three times a day, free healthcare, free housing, etc. If everything is free, there isn't really a need for work and income at all. We're much further off from what you are suggesting than I think many proponents of AI realize, but this would be the other side of that coin.
  - Udik 10y ago
    It is possible, in theory. That however assumes that the property of all those machines and product is public - that they are owned by the collectivity. And that this allows to run them efficiently. But even if this is possibke, it's the transition period between the current private property system and a completely collectivist one that's scary. Because at the moment almost all means of production are privately owned and run for profit. AIs will both skyrocket the profits while creating vast amounts of people completely unable to survive with their wages - and therefore to buy any products. At some point the system has to collapse and become a sort of communism, but I don't think it will be a painless transition at all.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Tistel 10y ago
In terms of obsolescence, it's dog eat dog within the tech world too. On Friday, our new COO told the dev team (we were not consulted, just the CEO) of his plans to move the back office to the cloud (salesforce). Nobody but the coo knows salesforce. The guy beside me was devops (the guy who deals with AWS, docker and the server) he was basically made obsolete for the company. I have the weekend to decide if I want to learn salesforce (some shitty version of Java ( which is shitty already) called apex) or start looking for a job. So I have a lot of empathy for the workers who have these automation obsolescence dropped on them. It will hit us all.
jasonpeacock 10y ago
When AI can create prize-winning art (literature, art, film) then I will become scared, as the only role left will be consumer.
manicdee 10y ago
A lot of weird stuff happens close to zero. Dropping from $1/loaf of bread to $0.50/loaf is only fifty cents, which for some people seems tiny. For someone who doesn't have a job or any assets generating income, the fifty cents means they can afford to eat.

32 points by sidko 10y ago

yehosef 10y ago

Typo - "AI will expand 'useless class' of humans"

dalke 10y ago
Indeed. We have little need now for elevator operators. But 100 years ago, when steam, electricity, and wide-spread mechanization of the previous decades had brought huge advantages in efficiency, the thought was that there would be increased leisure, and the time to pursue the activities which make us more human, like friendship, raising children, hobbies, and more serious avocations. Or watching TV, playing video games, and getting high. This isn't the "useless class" but the "leisure class." Of course, quoting from the article: > Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. “I choose this very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not from a moral viewpoint,” If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  > If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want. The term "useless" is inherently relative. The universe does not have a natural position on "usefulness". So yes, you do get to make it to mean whatever you want it to be. That is not a basis to criticize anyone - any framework you choose to set a basis is itself arbitrary. Unless you believe in some "higher purpose", where all discussion ceases to be meaningful because nothing can be proven and you can claim whatever you want, and the loudest and/or strongest "wins".
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  It was a common idea in the 70s too. All it takes is a bout of inflation to kill the idea that we've run out of things for people to do. It'll happen to the United States if the flow of underpriced Chinese goods dries up and the US needs to start making its own goods.

scandox 10y ago

Jack Williamson attempted a kind of exposition of these issues in The Humanoids (1948), the follow up to his classic story With Folded Hands (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands). What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical whatsoever...unless they wish to. Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way first. Fun times.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

partycoder 10y ago

It's not that they will be useless, it's just that their use does not make financial sense. AI replaces humans when: - AI is able to perform a new human intelligence task - Perform at a human level of reliability - Perform at a cost-effective level - It is wrapped in form of a product or service that makes it easy to distribute and deploy

hnarayanan 10y ago

People of leisure!

exit 10y ago

it could also unleash a lot of currently stupidly-employed people to do what they'd actually excel at.

danieltillett 10y ago
Do we really need more of them?

decayy 10y ago

Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will take away human jobs. The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.

Houshalter 10y ago
There is no law of economics that says the value of labor has to be above survival, let alone minimum wage. When cars replaced horses, most horses didn't get new jobs. They literally became worth less than the cost of feeding them, and were slaughtered. Near future AI will make the majority of humans basically worthless. There isn't much left that people can do, and computers can't. Sure maybe high intelligence jobs like engineers and programmers are safe (for now...), but most people can't become programmers or engineers.
- lgas 10y ago
  Do you have any citation on the assertions that the invention of cars resulted in the slaughter of many horses? I've spent a fair amount of time googling but can't find anything about it.
- collyw 10y ago
  Economics is an entirely human construction. Such laws can be made as easily as the rest of the economic system and it makes sense.
danieltillett 10y ago
That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.
- lisivka 10y ago
  What will happen to owner(s) of AI? Will they survive? :-)

jimmcslim 10y ago

Always worth linking to Marshall Brain's "Manna" with a title like that; http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

exratione 10y ago

Comparative advantage isn't abolished just because the advantage is large. Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved. A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.

Houshalter 10y ago
Comparative advantage only works if you have something of value to trade. If AIs automates away your job, then you no longer have anything of value to trade with.
- exratione 10y ago
  Your comment rather illustrates my point.

andrewclunn 10y ago

Seems to me that a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. The other weakness of this argument is that in order to perform many of the human jobs, the AI will need a robotic body. Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

mac01021 10y ago
> a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc. > Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs. A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

collyw 10y ago

Management structures in existing companies have already created this in some places I have worked.

dineshp2 10y ago

> But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to summon a class of eternally useless human beings. Can't help but notice the sensationalist tone. The author also seems to have a pessimistic view of the future and the role of humans in it. Certain roles may be replaced by AI and humans will move on to do different things, but that does not mean it will render those humans useless. What exactly will humans move on to do is of course an open ended question, but if history is any indication, it won't be bleak as the author predicts.

tumbas 10y ago

there are worrying amout of people that say things ridicilous as this. It would not be a problem if they were put in it's place by being treated as, pardon my language, stupid fucktards disqusting to talk to. Instad these people are treated as forward thinkers that should be listened to. It reminds me a lot of eugenics. In the US that was cutting edge science 100 years ago until germans wanted to implement it. Just like homosexuality is natural is science now. When people stop distinguishing between left or right and start taking Vatican for not terrorist organisation and something respectable then bad stuff happen. It is bad when society is not imune to people like this.

agentultra 10y ago

These screeds have one grave misunderstanding: that AI can compete with a human. It's like apples to oranges. Alpha Go may have beat the best human player in the world but you can't ask it to fold the laundry or how it felt about Angela's Ashes. I think we'll be able to optimize away boring, repetitive jobs and tasks that require vast numerical and statistical quantities. And that's a good thing. We'll just need to adapt our economic models away from the indentured servitude to the Protestant Ethic.

Houshalter 10y ago
AlphaGo is only the beginning. The same tech in alphaGo has recently caused massive improvements in speech recognition, machine vision, translation, NLP, etc. It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry", and be able to control a robot body to do it. We've had robotic tech for a long time. But only right now is the AI catching up to make use of it.
- agentultra 10y ago
  These are all highly specialized tasks. Useful, but not general enough to replace a conscious human being. > It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry" Who the hell wants to spend their life folding laundry anyway? Some people do only because that is what their circumstances dictate. There's no reason they should if we have the means to alleviate them of such trivial "work." It's my understanding that we already have these devices. They're slow as molasses but the efficiency of not having a human do it is great. Good. We're all better off.
terhechte 10y ago
Something I never see answered in these discussions: What are the previous workers to do, those whose jobs were so simple that a properly configured AI can perform it faster and better. Every other job that they would be capable of is just as likely to be replaced by another properly configured machine. If every possible tasks a person would be capable of handling can be solved by a specific machine in a better way then what should these people do? I am not talking about engineers or white collar workers. I'm talking about people who were unfortunately born with what I'd for a lack of a better word call "low IQ" though I know that the term and the science behind it is highly flawed. Currently, those persons are in the vast minority. Only a small percentile of the human population falls into this category. But as AI gets smarter, year over year, the minimal job requirement will grow. I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.

Tistel 10y ago

I am a programmer. Its totally possible for this to happen. But, bugs will buy us time. We are too stupid (for now, a new language or proof system could change this) to write good enough software to destroy ourselves. Also energy efficiency. Organic life is crazy efficient at turning food into work (If you have access to abundant clean water). Give a person a happy meal and they can walk for days. A robot of the same size/weight/strength will kill it's battery or exhaust it's fossil fuel tank in a few hours. The last programmer putting the finishing touches on artificial general intelligence (the one that will put programmers out of work too) just needs to make sure "love the meat bags who made you" is the second last instruction. The last instruction is don't alter the second last instruction. Personally, I would enjoy hiking the west coast trail, drawing and painting more. I will miss coding through. I love the feeling when it finally work the way you want it to. The point being: if we are smart enough to automate all the jobs, we are probably smart enough to provide food/healthcare to everyone for free (basic living wage or whatever). It's not the end of world. There are lots of ways to spend your time.

Houshalter 10y ago
First, read the article before commenting. This is about automation replacing jobs, not the singularity. Second energy efficiency isn't a big deal. A robot army that runs on petrol is still scary. Energy efficiency has not kept machines from beating humans physically, at all. Lastly, it's impossible to code "love the meat bags who made you". AI's do not take English language instructions. You need to specify exactly what you mean by "love" and "meat bags", etc, and not make any mistakes at all.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

DarkContinent 10y ago

Humans with fewer skills than the elite were not pushed out of the employment market by the invention of dishwashers, laundry machines, or vacuum cleaners. The invention of AI is hardly different.

terhechte 10y ago
A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different, you just train it on the task like you'd train a human worker and that's it. No need to invent a new machine.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      > There's no point to AI without us. But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.
      - vinceguidry 10y ago
        If AI is truly useful, then it'll be put to use for everybody. Technology has been dicking around with our social classes for thousands of years. You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in the first place. You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal. Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Udik 10y ago

I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to produce humans. A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for love and raise kids. If the technology is actually possible, there simply can't be any space left for old style, flesh and blood humans in the economy.

sigkill 10y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Another way of looking at it is, when the cars came, the carriages were obsolete. Sure, the drivers may have reskilled to some other vocation but what about the horse? In this situation, we are the horses, and the AI is the car.
bsbechtel 10y ago
When this happens, costs for virtually everything will more or less go to zero, because we can make humans to make more humans to make everything else in our society that costs money. Try to imagine a society where virtually everything is free...visualize walking around and getting free coffee from Starbucks, free rides from Uber, free meals three times a day, free healthcare, free housing, etc. If everything is free, there isn't really a need for work and income at all. We're much further off from what you are suggesting than I think many proponents of AI realize, but this would be the other side of that coin.
- Udik 10y ago
  It is possible, in theory. That however assumes that the property of all those machines and product is public - that they are owned by the collectivity. And that this allows to run them efficiently. But even if this is possibke, it's the transition period between the current private property system and a completely collectivist one that's scary. Because at the moment almost all means of production are privately owned and run for profit. AIs will both skyrocket the profits while creating vast amounts of people completely unable to survive with their wages - and therefore to buy any products. At some point the system has to collapse and become a sort of communism, but I don't think it will be a painless transition at all.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Tistel 10y ago

In terms of obsolescence, it's dog eat dog within the tech world too. On Friday, our new COO told the dev team (we were not consulted, just the CEO) of his plans to move the back office to the cloud (salesforce). Nobody but the coo knows salesforce. The guy beside me was devops (the guy who deals with AWS, docker and the server) he was basically made obsolete for the company. I have the weekend to decide if I want to learn salesforce (some shitty version of Java ( which is shitty already) called apex) or start looking for a job. So I have a lot of empathy for the workers who have these automation obsolescence dropped on them. It will hit us all.

jasonpeacock 10y ago

When AI can create prize-winning art (literature, art, film) then I will become scared, as the only role left will be consumer.

manicdee 10y ago

A lot of weird stuff happens close to zero. Dropping from $1/loaf of bread to $0.50/loaf is only fifty cents, which for some people seems tiny. For someone who doesn't have a job or any assets generating income, the fifty cents means they can afford to eat.