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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 t

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.
- agentultra 10y ago
  First there's a slippery slope there. You presume that all menial tasks will be taken over by AI or robots. You also assume that some or all people who presently perform these menial tasks are not smart enough or capable of performing tasks beyond the menial ones. The problem I have with that is that economic and political forces often keep people, intelligent people, in menial jobs for no better reason than circumstance. There are plenty of smart, capable people with real passions for music or mathematics who are stuck filling forms in an office because they need to a job to pay the rent and bills. There are many ways they could have ended up at that job. But if they were given the opportunity to be free from that circumstance, what do you think they would do? If the economic output of the region is the same regardless, does it matter if they do nothing? I have a belief that people will find more productive things to do that they previously never could. > 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. That's what I meant when I suggested we would need to shift our economic models away from the ideals set out by Max Weber. Criticisms about the formation of capitalism aside it traded serfdom for indentured servitude. It allowed us to transform our world and build great things... but I think it's time is nearing an end. But yet the greatest opponents to change are those with the most to lose. And they have quite a lot of money and power. update grammar.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  Life has had billions of years to evolve into an efficient system, from a thermodynamic standpoint. We may make AI backed robots that eclipse humans in terms of capabilities, but I strongly doubt we'll approach human price/performance ratio for highly varied tasks for a very long time, if ever. Positions that involve a wide variety of fairly simple but involved skills such as landscapers, mechanics, or maids will probably be around for a long time. Don't forget the fact that as other jobs are automated away, the supply of these sorts of laborers will increase, resulting in lower wages.
- random_upvoter 10y ago
  IMO programmers have got more to worry about the future of their job than bricklayers. It seems rather obvious to me that the job of software developer would be the first victim of advances in AI.

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.

agentultra 10y ago
First there's a slippery slope there. You presume that all menial tasks will be taken over by AI or robots. You also assume that some or all people who presently perform these menial tasks are not smart enough or capable of performing tasks beyond the menial ones. The problem I have with that is that economic and political forces often keep people, intelligent people, in menial jobs for no better reason than circumstance. There are plenty of smart, capable people with real passions for music or mathematics who are stuck filling forms in an office because they need to a job to pay the rent and bills. There are many ways they could have ended up at that job. But if they were given the opportunity to be free from that circumstance, what do you think they would do? If the economic output of the region is the same regardless, does it matter if they do nothing? I have a belief that people will find more productive things to do that they previously never could. > 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. That's what I meant when I suggested we would need to shift our economic models away from the ideals set out by Max Weber. Criticisms about the formation of capitalism aside it traded serfdom for indentured servitude. It allowed us to transform our world and build great things... but I think it's time is nearing an end. But yet the greatest opponents to change are those with the most to lose. And they have quite a lot of money and power. update grammar.
CuriouslyC 10y ago
Life has had billions of years to evolve into an efficient system, from a thermodynamic standpoint. We may make AI backed robots that eclipse humans in terms of capabilities, but I strongly doubt we'll approach human price/performance ratio for highly varied tasks for a very long time, if ever. Positions that involve a wide variety of fairly simple but involved skills such as landscapers, mechanics, or maids will probably be around for a long time. Don't forget the fact that as other jobs are automated away, the supply of these sorts of laborers will increase, resulting in lower wages.
random_upvoter 10y ago
IMO programmers have got more to worry about the future of their job than bricklayers. It seems rather obvious to me that the job of software developer would be the first victim of advances in AI.