5 ms·

Stories like this make me think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie's father was a factory worker who struggled to make ends meet, the irony being th

Stories like this make me think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie's father was a factory worker who struggled to make ends meet, the irony being that his job was to screw toothpaste caps on toothpaste tubes. After the events of the book, Charlie's father went back to the factory but as an engineer to work on the machines that do his old job. Not everyone at the factory could have received that kind of promotion. I wonder what happened to them?

retube 10y ago
I dunno. But what happened to all the people that used to till the fields until tractors and combine harvesters came along? Thousands, literally thousands of professions have been made redundant by mechanisation and automation over the last few hundred years, but we're still all just as busy as ever. Look at all the professions that have been created in just the last 20 years thanks to the internet. Sure automation changes the nature of work, and the type of jobs that need doing, but I've yet to see a shred of evidence that continued advances in automation are going to put us all out of a job, other than vague "this time it's different".
- dota_fanatic 10y ago
  Praise it! With the death of those thousands of jobs, we now have tens of thousands of new jobs, all filled by the billions of people, and boy is it great. Our work is more fulfilling as we get more done in less time in ways that improve the world while earning money that buys magnitudes more than what it used to. People are healthier with mental health at an all time high since the great shift of 2008 when the majority of humanity reached the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I work 10hrs/wk at double the total pay what it took my parent a 60hr week to do. My commute is 10 minutes where his was 40. My healthcare is 3000x better and costs 1/100th. My house is three times bigger and 5x as energy efficient. All my friends live nearby and have similarly awesome lives with growing families across the board. Nobody has to rent anymore either. /s
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  What happened to the horses after cars and trains took their jobs? Sure we still keep them around but mostly just for fun. We don't need horses anymore. If robots can farm, mine, refine, and manufacture everything, what's left for people to do? Secretary? Replaced by AI. Customer service? AI. Fast food? AI. Bartender? AI. Doctor? AI. Lawyer? AI. Accountant? AI. Programmer? AI.
  - retube 10y ago
    Horses were good at one thing: dragging stuff around. Humans are a bit more adaptable.
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      AI is (only currently theoretically) capable of infinitely more than a human. Let's say you have an expert blacksmith. He comes from a long line of blacksmiths, each a renowned expert in their trade. One day, he starts teaching an AI (which has human dexterity) how to do his job, as his forefathers taught their children. Eventually the AI matches his skills, maybe even surpasses. The AI will never die. It can copy its instances infinitely. We don't need human blacksmiths anymore. When humans began to take over the earth, the single best survival trait among other organisms was being useful to humans. How useful are we to an intelligence that never gets tired, that can manage all the resources and means of production on earth? What if humans are seen as a net drain on the earth and its resources? What if 1% of the population doesn't need the 99% for anything anymore?
      - studentrob 10y ago
        True AI is a long way off according to top ML people like Yann LeCun We have no idea how a computer can be designed to come up with its own goals. We can teach it English, French, and Chinese, or get near perfect photo identification, but the computer cannot decide to learn to write a novel on its own. We could teach it to write novels, but there would still be other tasks it can't do. Even if a computer could self-direct 99% of known possible things in the universe, if there were one thing we could prove it would never learn, then it's not AI. It may not even be possible and we could be stuck with humans around forever. Ug.

retube 10y ago

I dunno. But what happened to all the people that used to till the fields until tractors and combine harvesters came along? Thousands, literally thousands of professions have been made redundant by mechanisation and automation over the last few hundred years, but we're still all just as busy as ever. Look at all the professions that have been created in just the last 20 years thanks to the internet. Sure automation changes the nature of work, and the type of jobs that need doing, but I've yet to see a shred of evidence that continued advances in automation are going to put us all out of a job, other than vague "this time it's different".

dota_fanatic 10y ago
Praise it! With the death of those thousands of jobs, we now have tens of thousands of new jobs, all filled by the billions of people, and boy is it great. Our work is more fulfilling as we get more done in less time in ways that improve the world while earning money that buys magnitudes more than what it used to. People are healthier with mental health at an all time high since the great shift of 2008 when the majority of humanity reached the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I work 10hrs/wk at double the total pay what it took my parent a 60hr week to do. My commute is 10 minutes where his was 40. My healthcare is 3000x better and costs 1/100th. My house is three times bigger and 5x as energy efficient. All my friends live nearby and have similarly awesome lives with growing families across the board. Nobody has to rent anymore either. /s
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
What happened to the horses after cars and trains took their jobs? Sure we still keep them around but mostly just for fun. We don't need horses anymore. If robots can farm, mine, refine, and manufacture everything, what's left for people to do? Secretary? Replaced by AI. Customer service? AI. Fast food? AI. Bartender? AI. Doctor? AI. Lawyer? AI. Accountant? AI. Programmer? AI.
- retube 10y ago
  Horses were good at one thing: dragging stuff around. Humans are a bit more adaptable.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    AI is (only currently theoretically) capable of infinitely more than a human. Let's say you have an expert blacksmith. He comes from a long line of blacksmiths, each a renowned expert in their trade. One day, he starts teaching an AI (which has human dexterity) how to do his job, as his forefathers taught their children. Eventually the AI matches his skills, maybe even surpasses. The AI will never die. It can copy its instances infinitely. We don't need human blacksmiths anymore. When humans began to take over the earth, the single best survival trait among other organisms was being useful to humans. How useful are we to an intelligence that never gets tired, that can manage all the resources and means of production on earth? What if humans are seen as a net drain on the earth and its resources? What if 1% of the population doesn't need the 99% for anything anymore?
    - studentrob 10y ago
      True AI is a long way off according to top ML people like Yann LeCun We have no idea how a computer can be designed to come up with its own goals. We can teach it English, French, and Chinese, or get near perfect photo identification, but the computer cannot decide to learn to write a novel on its own. We could teach it to write novels, but there would still be other tasks it can't do. Even if a computer could self-direct 99% of known possible things in the universe, if there were one thing we could prove it would never learn, then it's not AI. It may not even be possible and we could be stuck with humans around forever. Ug.