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I agree there, but there were waves of automation in agriculture that were then followed up by the peak of union strength. My point here is that I don't think

I agree there, but there were waves of automation in agriculture that were then followed up by the peak of union strength. My point here is that I don't think labor competes zero-sum with automation. I think that how automation gets deployed and how revenues get spent down are bargained over between workers and owners.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I mean unions really came about as a response to automation, as labor forces were centralized, homogeneous and non-seasonal. Previously it wasn't really possible to unionize because labor wasn't as consistent. My point here is that I don't think labor competes zero-sum with automation. I concede that so far as we can tell that may be true, but I'm highly skeptical that it will stay that way. Remember, wide scale industrial automation is less than 250 years old. I think that how automation gets deployed and how revenues get spent down are bargained over between workers and owners. Nah. Do you know why? Software engineers will never unionize. The guy or gal who is the type to organize, isn't building/writing the thing that is going to replace him/her. We're going to get to the point (hopefully) where our machine systems "apprentice" with our skilled laborers to take over their roles. The only way that this won't happen is if it's physically impossible to replicate skilled work by machine. Which I think we all would agree is ridiculous. Timeline? Not sure, but it's going to happen.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Software engineers will never unionize. If my local Wobblies branch wasn't a mess of infighting, I would already be unionized. You probably don't even have that excuse. Organize now!
- skmurphy 10y ago
  The way it works today is that different software engineers write the code that disemploys other software engineers. Also with machine learning access to open source code bases it would seem that machine systems could "apprentice" in the same way you posit the replacement of other skilled labor. The stronger argument for me is by analogy to chess software where centaurs (systems that combine human experts with chess tools outperform stand-alone software). Vinge offered this as a possible path in his original Singularity paper: intelligence augmentation (IA) may supplant AI or stand alone artificial intelligence for a wide range of the more complex tasks.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

I mean unions really came about as a response to automation, as labor forces were centralized, homogeneous and non-seasonal. Previously it wasn't really possible to unionize because labor wasn't as consistent. My point here is that I don't think labor competes zero-sum with automation. I concede that so far as we can tell that may be true, but I'm highly skeptical that it will stay that way. Remember, wide scale industrial automation is less than 250 years old. I think that how automation gets deployed and how revenues get spent down are bargained over between workers and owners. Nah. Do you know why? Software engineers will never unionize. The guy or gal who is the type to organize, isn't building/writing the thing that is going to replace him/her. We're going to get to the point (hopefully) where our machine systems "apprentice" with our skilled laborers to take over their roles. The only way that this won't happen is if it's physically impossible to replicate skilled work by machine. Which I think we all would agree is ridiculous. Timeline? Not sure, but it's going to happen.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Software engineers will never unionize. If my local Wobblies branch wasn't a mess of infighting, I would already be unionized. You probably don't even have that excuse. Organize now!
skmurphy 10y ago
The way it works today is that different software engineers write the code that disemploys other software engineers. Also with machine learning access to open source code bases it would seem that machine systems could "apprentice" in the same way you posit the replacement of other skilled labor. The stronger argument for me is by analogy to chess software where centaurs (systems that combine human experts with chess tools outperform stand-alone software). Vinge offered this as a possible path in his original Singularity paper: intelligence augmentation (IA) may supplant AI or stand alone artificial intelligence for a wide range of the more complex tasks.