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The gigantic wall of AI/Automation is unavoidable and if the NYT can't see it, I doubt a lot of people outside of tech do. It's my biggest worry right now. I w

The gigantic wall of AI/Automation is unavoidable and if the NYT can't see it, I doubt a lot of people outside of tech do. It's my biggest worry right now. I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism. The repercussions of AI should be worrying every leader in the world right now. Immigrants? H1-bs? Illegals? Robots? Please, let's have a real talk. Capitalism will destroy capitalism as we know it. Edit: Because my post is high up in this topic, I hope to get some attention of people that are more invested than me on figuring out this problem. One of the least communist solutions I've thought of is a quasi-capitalistic economic system. Each publicly traded company should have profit-sharing-only stocks and profit-sharing/management-voting stocks. Stop all wars and futile spending and buy profit-sharing stocks with our tax dollars. That is, let's socialize part of every company's profits but not management. Let's also ensure the system isn't gamed by stashing profits offshore or having overpaid upper management to decrease profit numbers. Then we keep reinvesting a percentage of profits and future taxes into other publicly traded companies. Use the rest of the profits as the fund for universal basic income. I think this whole thing is going to be a shit-show even if we can control the AI. If we can't, may it have mercy on us.

marknutter 10y ago
I wonder sometimes if the hype surrounding AI/Automation isn't just a clever way for socialists to push their agenda.
- LesZedCB 10y ago
  unfortunately, it's not a concerted effort. We haven't been well enough organized to create a campaign like that. However, it does provide a really good talking point. We have, however, known that a development like automation was inevitable.
- esahione 10y ago
  The logic is irrefutable. At some time in the future the drive to increase profits by automation will increase unemployment in ways that will lead to the biggest recession we'll ever see if we don't have basic income. Can you see a capitalistic world working with 30% unemployment? How about 80%?
  - TillE 10y ago
    This, combined with the worldwide rejection of neoliberal capitalism at the ballot box, should be really strong indicators that the status quo is unsustainable and you're not going to be able to reestablish it. UBI via a sovereign wealth fund is a good goal to work towards if you want to avoid some miserable dystopia.
  - simonh 10y ago
    What percentage of the labour market in 1900 were doing jobs that don't exist anymore? In the 1920s the UK employed 2 million miners, yet nowadays we don't have 2 million unemployed mine workers on the dole campaigning to be let back down the pits so they can have their jobs back. Same goes for vast swathes of the employment landscape back then. Instead we have vast swathes of people employed doing jobs that didn't exist back then and in many cases were unimaginable. Looking at the UK, many times more people do service sector jobs now that didn't exist back then than the entire population of 1900 Britain. Almost a million people work in the 'Creative and Media' sector alone. You could argue that all those jobs could be done by AIs. Well, maybe, but I don't believe we'll have AIs capable of that for at least another 100 years. The last 50 years of AI research have barely even scratched the surface of the problem. So I believe the transition is going to be slow enough that we'll have several generations to adapt. It's not a problem we have to solve in 5 years or 10 or we're toast. Society is going to change so much, in ways that we can't anticipate, that trying to solve it now is futile. What we need to do is focus on the actual problems before us as they occur in the real world. There are enough of them, after all. Maybe Basic Income can be beneficial, even today with near-full employment by historic standards. I'm hopeful. But I'm skeptical that were anywhere near an automation-lead employment crisis. After all the world just absorbed adding a Billion Chinese people to the global work force pretty well.
    - milcron 10y ago
      >even today with near-full employment by historic standards There's quite a difference between the "employment" figures and the labor force participation rate[0]. The employment figure does not take into account people who have stopped looking for work, or people who have a part-time job that they wish was full-time. [0] http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/563caf319dd7ccfc418bcbfb-1200-900/october-2015-labor-force-participation-rate.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/563caf319dd7ccfc418...
- sosuke 10y ago
  I think it is genuine belief and a desire to find a solution to what looks like it could be a very chaotic future outcome. I've puzzle on it myself and find several options I come up with sounding socialist. I don't have an answer that I think is viable or that I even like but I believe that we could be quickly heading in the direction of 'robots' taking a on many more jobs.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  It really isn't. AI and automation are both advancing so fast currently that even the tech-aware are, well, unaware at its speed, and what the coming social effects will be.
  - brandon272 10y ago
    > AI and automation are both advancing so fast In what ways/areas are they advancing fast?
    - Baeocystin 10y ago
      https://www.wired.com/2015/01/ai-arrived-really-worries-worlds-brightest-minds/ https://www.wired.com/2015/01/ai-arrived-really-worries-worl... and https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-28/how-advances-automation-will-change-future-work https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-28/how-advances-automati... will get you started.
- sgift 10y ago
  The agenda that everyone should have the option to not be homeless? These socialists ... now they even use reality for their evil plans.
pyrale 10y ago
The NYT article is quite lucid about it. They do argue that this gigantic wall should not be avoided, but dealt with through legislation and better sharing of wealth. That's a pretty logical answer, and they support it with good examples of past policies to ease the social pain of economic changes.
- esahione 10y ago
  I don't think that they quite grasp or explain the enormity of it. The two biggest strongholds humans have against automation are thought and manual, but complex, labor. Soon they will all be automated.
  - haissam 10y ago
    > Soon they will all be automated. and that's all good and fine, as long as the wealth created by the robots is redistributed and not funneled to a handful of executives' bank accounts in tax havens.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Who honestly thinks this extra value will be captured by more than the tiniest handful of already-rich people?
      - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
        If that's the case then it will probably devour itself, you can't have business without customers.
  - pyrale 10y ago
    > I don't think that they quite grasp or explain the enormity of it. I believe they do. They just remember people (and we all should) that this was supposed to be the pinnacle of our society, and not it's darkest hour.
nickgrosvenor 10y ago
No, that's a theory. Most kids coming out of college will go into careers their grandparents have never even heard of or don't understand. That's the way it's always been, while old jobs get replaced by technology, new jobs get created. It's not unique to this generation.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Grandparents aren't that dumb. Go dig up US employment statistics (BLS is good source). There are a lot of people doing jobs that are really easy to describe. "Driver". "Clerk". And so on.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Not only that, but if you describe something very minutely and exacting, it will seem very difficult. But if you describe it as "A game with 2 opposing sides, with a shared oblong ball, and each team tries to get it to the other side past their opponents." And I just described US football.
- esahione 10y ago
  When has thought ever been automated before? When have we had a tool that can build tools? How can capitalism survive with 80+% unemployment? It's as inevitable as gravity.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  "That's the way it's always been" works great, right up until it doesn't. History is full of periods of great upheaval, and there's no reason to think those are over, either. This is a problem we need to pay attention to.
- root_axis 10y ago
  > while old jobs get replaced by technology, new jobs get created. But always significantly fewer than before, that's the entire point of the technology, to reduce the number of humans needed for the process.
alkonaut 10y ago
I don't think Universal income is necessary but a more complete redistribution system would certainly be needed. At the very least one in which e.g healthcare isn't tied to employment, for example.
DickingAround 10y ago
There is no one to entrust UBI to. It will rapidly stop being universal or basic as people pervert it with exceptions. Controlling everyone's income will attract the greatest power mongers the world has ever seen. Perhaps the unspoken honest answer is that people without other assets are going to live in 'poverty' (compared to the rich); their brains will operate at better watts-per-compute than the computers for a long time and still be worth something. They will earn a living on this. The people that do have assets (e.g. own the robots), are going to be extravagantly wealthy. It will be a feudalism but without violence, seniorage, or other expectation that the poor work for the good to the rich. Just that there's going to be really poor and really rich. I and my kids will almost certainly be left behind in this. I am not an asset owner. But I will not attack my neighbor for their wealth. I will not turn over my ability to live to some bureaucrat who steals it from the rich and will eventually make me dance and beg for it. Let the rich asset owners go to the stars even if I will not be joining them. Better to have some of us get ahead than hold all back trying to leave no one behind.
- nickgrosvenor 10y ago
  Your predictions are at least 50 years too soon, and several unknowable things will occur between here and there
  - DickingAround 10y ago
    Agreed. But if I have to show some world given the current trajectory, that's my best bet.
    - nickgrosvenor 10y ago
      My favorite story is Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. He got the best futurists money can buy to predict what the near future would be. They had all sorts of strange interfaces and ideas. Newspapers with screens on them, etc. It was just 3 years before the iPhone came out...
- kefka 10y ago
  Who else to entrust UBI to than not-humans? We're talking of robots getting us in this mess, along with extreme automation of everything. Well, lets start looking into automating government. We have a lot of cruft and crap in our governmental system. Layers upon layers of laws, bureaucrats deciding on felonies. And it's even worse, where we really don't know the boundary of the law. And even less so if you're rich. So, what would it take to automate law itself?I'm not talking of the judicial, but executive and legislative seems simpler to target for excision and replacement.
baursak 10y ago
> I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism. Nitpick. UBI is not socialism. It's still capitalism.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
The people the article is discussing are already receiving a free money and do not need to work. How will writing "basic income" rather than "disability" or "welfare" on top of the check change anything?
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Simple: with UBI, you can eliminate a gigantic amount of bureaucracy in administering those programs. How much time and money is wasted in employing armies of public servants to go chase after welfare recipients and make sure they aren't "cheating" by making money somehow, or that disability recipients aren't "cheating" by not being as disabled as they claim? It doesn't help that welfare punishes people who want to work.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    So the current leisure class will not be helped at all by a BI, relative to what they already have. Since you think a BI will save money, could you do a back of the envelope calculation illustrating how that would work? I can't see how (for example) 10M on welfare + 1M administrators could possibly be cheaper than 100M on welfare.
    - oftenwrong 10y ago
      Relevant: If We Can Afford Our Current Welfare System, We Can Afford Basic Income https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-can-afford-our-current-welfare-system-we-can-afford-basic-income-9ae9b5f186af#.2yyq7pacn https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-can-afford-our-current...
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Those numbers suggest about 10% overhead. Giving free money to 900% more people in order to save 10% on overhead is not a cost saving strategy. Your article proves my point, even though it goes to great effort not to admit that.
stcredzero 10y ago
One of the least communist solutions I've thought of is a quasi-capitalistic economic system. The US and various countries around the world have this. That is, let's socialize part of every company's profits but not management. In other words, taxes? Your "government pays for shares to get money" scheme will be gamed as much as the current tax code is.
- esahione 10y ago
  There's zero chance our political spectrum will ever increase taxes to allow for UBI to be widespread and sufficient. This way we compensate innovators and entrepreneurs for their work. That is, we give them the leeway to innovate, improve their own income, etc. It's a lot more palatable than 'let's tax everyone at 85%'.
  - alexc05 10y ago
    I think that's a very Ayn Rand / Atlas Shrugged type of analysis. I also think that falls short of accounting for the full spectrum of human behavior. There are numerous innovators, artists and creators who are driven by more than financial rewards. If there was a re-balancing of economic priorities, I'm not sure I agree that 'innovation would stop' (which isn't precisely what you said, so forgive the straw man). On the whole I think you might see different people driving the world forward, but you wouldn't see the world stop. Larry Page tinkered with computers before he knew he was going to be a bajillionaire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page. Would Zuckerberg still have created thefacebook? What about all those school-teachers who give everything they have for a $30k salary (and hugs from snotty faced kids)? I may be misreading your point - so forgive me if that's true - but there are a lot of places where BI is making and is moving forward. They're also doing it without the 85% tax rate you're quoting.
  - sp332 10y ago
    I'm not sure what that middle part means. A lot of businesses were started recently that would not have been viable without the ACA. If we expand the safety net, more people can take chances, and there will be more (in absolute numbers) wild successes which can be taxed to fund the safety nets. There's probably diminishing returns somewhere but I don't think we're near it yet.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>The gigantic wall of AI/Automation is unavoidable Well, we've had the automated IT-based office for decades and the cries of everyone losing their jobs didn't really happen, not the paperless office. I certainly see AI changing things, but these hysterical futurist articles tend to lean more pie-in-the-sky techies than managerial types. Managers and executives know that employment, today, is a mostly a fiction. A lot of what drives employment could be automated right now, but isn't for political reasons. Not the least of which is internal company politics on having as many direct reports under you as the threat of becoming a 'small' department means becoming eliminated by outsourcing or in-sourced/absorbed by another department or simply a loss of prestige. The idea that employment numbers are purely meritoriousness is fairly questionable. Its bureaucratic and political primarily. The larger issue is, how much will this change things from the norm from a reasonable perspective. We can't automate most things and that probably means a certain class of jobs will be threatened but most will be fine. So even if that doubles or triples unemployment, that means we have unemployment rates closer to European economies or perhaps higher, but still doable without a radical restructuring of our economy. The futurist dream of 100% unemployment in ten years and everyone on UBI simply isn't happening. My worry is that we'd probably need a very liberal government to handle this as it will put it quite the load on welfare, but currently the US has a radical conservative administration as well as a conservative congress, which means the political fight to raise taxes and expand welfare for displaced workers is going to be tough or impossible. The problem is that angry voters put in isolationists and those who they perceive have and can build wealth, but those types of people are often very anti-social services and very anti-welfare. So the voters took a big gamble. They think the Trump admin will 'fix' jobs. Jobs that are destined to go away. But if he fails, and he probably will, then they will lack the social safety net to fall back on. Those in vulnerable industries, often in rural and less urbanized communities, simply voted the wrong way and most likely will be punished economically for it.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  "Well, we've had the automated IT-based office for decades and the cries of everyone losing their jobs didn't really happen, not the paperless office." I'm sure I read in the economist that the number of people doing office work has been falling for some time.
devoply 10y ago
> Capitalism will destroy capitalism as we know it. Capitalism will not destroy itself. Capitalism will reach its conclusion. We should let it. Herald the dawn of the new age.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Harold is a ghoul with a tree growing out of his head. Herald is the word you were looking for.
alexc05 10y ago
So my Girlfriend (Monica) is currently doing her Master's at UPENN in social-policy & data science. Her major area of research and focus is on the impact of technological unemployment (which is an umbrella term which represents job loss due to robots and AI) (we're currently looking for an internship by the way, so if you're in this area, please feel free to reach out!) Some of the estimates of job-losses approach >50% which, for context, the great depression was 15% to 25% So we're looking at the rough equivalent of 2 to 3 great depressions in terms of unemployment, but productivity should be equal or higher. A lot of the solutions being looked at center around basic income, but there are some really interesting questions around BI like "how do we help people deal with the emotional impact of 'freeloading'?" or "how do we deal with 'life without purpose'?" She's thrown out some interesting solutions (I think). There is expected to be a lot of focus on subsidized training. One sort-of "out there" idea which I don't think I've heard anywhere was 'framing' the BI payments as a 'royalty' on the data they provide merely by existing. Since marketing, science and government with the help of big-data tracks everyone so deeply then turns around and re-sells that data, the people being reported on 'deserve a royalty' on the data they provide. (I'm paraphrasing and she is way smarter than me, so the way she put it was a lot more convincing). If you're looking for more information on the coming tsunami of technological unemployment there were some incredibly interesting whitepapers published by the white-house on the policy impact of this stuff. PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - oct 2016 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/whitehouse_files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/preparing_for_the_future_of_ai.pdf https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/whi... Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy - dec 2016 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/fi... Monica's papers really echoed those whitehouse ones, though she hasn't published any of them yet, but the professors seem interested in publishing with her on a few things. Anyways, this stuff really is a pretty big deal. You'll see Elon Musk talking about the 50% unemployment figure and the need for BI. Who knows where today's whitehouse is going to go on this stuff, but we're really going to have to be prepared. Ontario Canada is kicking off a project in this now and a few other countries around the world have pilots brewing.
- massysett 10y ago
mrfusion 10y ago
Your idea sounds interesting but I thinks it's equivalent to a corporate tax. It's basically identical if you think about it.
- esahione 10y ago
  They aren't equivalent. While both may give identical cash-flows, one has a financial outlay in the beginning while the other has a political outlay. I just don't think it is likely that the current political class in America will raise taxes to the levels necessary to subsidize UBI.
MR4D 10y ago
I agree with most of your comments. However, I wouldn't think of this as a capitalist-communist spectrum. In fact, I wouldn't think of either of them as long term solutions in this future. What both systems have in common is that they are built around scarcity. For capitalism, it is a method of price discovery. For communism, it is rationing by the state ("From each according to his ability..."). When there is no more scarcity, then there is no more need for either price discovery or for rationing.* Therefore, will need to create a new economic model that is not built on scarcity. *Footnote - there are some things that will always be scare, such as location. Having a view of a calm beach, or of boundless nature, or a city skyline will always have a scarcity issue. It will be interesting to see how that scarcity is dealt with in this future.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I think in part your solution is on the right track but not the complete answer (hell, I don't think I have a complete answer myself). In my opinion, the additional work would need to be done to focus on further decentralization of governments and businesses since both have been on a trend toward further centralized bureaucracies that rarely respond to their respect stakeholders (citizens and consumers). In my view that would mean businesses should be held in common by the workers as a term of employment. Think of it was a credit union but you just happen to work there. Entrepreneurs and managers will always be in the mix of this because honestly individuals sometimes get good ideas but they shouldn't be off the hook with incredibly vast sums of wealth as to allow them to create their own fiefdoms. After all, they too are just one person in an ocean of people. What's funny about this idea is that it's not mine. I remember a long time ago that I use to go on a web forum on the New Speak Dictionary site. The site owner styled himself a Libertarian Syndicalist and he espoused very similar views here. I think it's inevitable that this might become the normal state of things if people become aware of this possible alternative to centralized state vs centralized business.
- chillwaves 10y ago
  This sounds like the definition of socialism.
  - norea-armozel 10y ago
    In as much as it's pre-Marxist and pre-Utopian socialism, sure. But if you told a hardline ML that this was socialism they'd probably call you a deviationist or some other buzz word.
fnord123 10y ago
>I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism. UBC without any social contract in place may further allow immigrants to be alienated into language communities. Alienation breeds ill sentiment. I really wonder what the solution should be.
deleted 10y ago
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openasocket 10y ago
I think the fallacy here is similar to Malthusianism in the 19th century. In that case the problem was the assumption that agricultural yields wouldn't improve over time, and your argument is assuming that improving technology won't create more jobs than it obsoletes. We're not going to wind up with companies that consist of just a CEO and a dozen factories. (NOTE: than I'm only talking about automation, not the creation of hard AI, which you allude to. That's a whole other kettle of fish)
georgeecollins 10y ago
The point the article is making is that the changes in income distribution so far is not due to robots, it is due to policy decisions that can be changed. The impact of automation is a profound topic. But it doesn't preclude us from making the policy change that would have altered income distribution in the last ten years, and the next ten years as well.
widowlark 10y ago
Capitalism is supposed to cannibalize itself.
pokemongoaway 10y ago
A primary focus should be on overthrowing the military industrial complex, which seems to be the source of a lot of waste - both of human focus and capital. Anyone doing their research will reach the conclusion that there are many factors of misalignment and sabotage within the US government. If the US didn't have its fingers in so many other governments, then it would be safer to ignore this fact.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >A primary focus should be on overthrowing the military industrial complex, which seems to be the source of a lot of waste... If the US didn't have its fingers in so many other governments, then it would be safer to ignore this fact. The only problem I have with this idea is that, if the US weren't the superpower pulling strings, surely someone else (Russia or China) would be. Would that be any better for the world? How much waste was there during Soviet times, when so many nations had so little productivity under Soviet management, and their economies were closed to the rest of the world? Personally, I'd rather see a more equal alliance among western nations, but for some reason that just doesn't seem to be happening.
  - pokemongoaway 10y ago
    We can have the conversation about which country (if any) should be the leader of the free world once we have liberated the facts about the US military industry complex's world influence to a mainstream status.
u_wot_m8 10y ago
end game will be massive population reduction. Universal income doesn't change the fact that our resources are finite and humans reproduce exponentially. UNs top agenda is population control, read between the lines.
- mac01021 10y ago
  The UN? Which lines am I supposed to be reading between?
RandyRanderson 10y ago
"Capitalism will destroy capitalism", very good! Maybe it always does by definition?

marknutter 10y ago

I wonder sometimes if the hype surrounding AI/Automation isn't just a clever way for socialists to push their agenda.

LesZedCB 10y ago
unfortunately, it's not a concerted effort. We haven't been well enough organized to create a campaign like that. However, it does provide a really good talking point. We have, however, known that a development like automation was inevitable.
esahione 10y ago
The logic is irrefutable. At some time in the future the drive to increase profits by automation will increase unemployment in ways that will lead to the biggest recession we'll ever see if we don't have basic income. Can you see a capitalistic world working with 30% unemployment? How about 80%?
- TillE 10y ago
  This, combined with the worldwide rejection of neoliberal capitalism at the ballot box, should be really strong indicators that the status quo is unsustainable and you're not going to be able to reestablish it. UBI via a sovereign wealth fund is a good goal to work towards if you want to avoid some miserable dystopia.
- simonh 10y ago
  What percentage of the labour market in 1900 were doing jobs that don't exist anymore? In the 1920s the UK employed 2 million miners, yet nowadays we don't have 2 million unemployed mine workers on the dole campaigning to be let back down the pits so they can have their jobs back. Same goes for vast swathes of the employment landscape back then. Instead we have vast swathes of people employed doing jobs that didn't exist back then and in many cases were unimaginable. Looking at the UK, many times more people do service sector jobs now that didn't exist back then than the entire population of 1900 Britain. Almost a million people work in the 'Creative and Media' sector alone. You could argue that all those jobs could be done by AIs. Well, maybe, but I don't believe we'll have AIs capable of that for at least another 100 years. The last 50 years of AI research have barely even scratched the surface of the problem. So I believe the transition is going to be slow enough that we'll have several generations to adapt. It's not a problem we have to solve in 5 years or 10 or we're toast. Society is going to change so much, in ways that we can't anticipate, that trying to solve it now is futile. What we need to do is focus on the actual problems before us as they occur in the real world. There are enough of them, after all. Maybe Basic Income can be beneficial, even today with near-full employment by historic standards. I'm hopeful. But I'm skeptical that were anywhere near an automation-lead employment crisis. After all the world just absorbed adding a Billion Chinese people to the global work force pretty well.
  - milcron 10y ago
    >even today with near-full employment by historic standards There's quite a difference between the "employment" figures and the labor force participation rate[0]. The employment figure does not take into account people who have stopped looking for work, or people who have a part-time job that they wish was full-time. [0] http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/563caf319dd7ccfc418bcbfb-1200-900/october-2015-labor-force-participation-rate.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/563caf319dd7ccfc418...
sosuke 10y ago
I think it is genuine belief and a desire to find a solution to what looks like it could be a very chaotic future outcome. I've puzzle on it myself and find several options I come up with sounding socialist. I don't have an answer that I think is viable or that I even like but I believe that we could be quickly heading in the direction of 'robots' taking a on many more jobs.
Baeocystin 10y ago
It really isn't. AI and automation are both advancing so fast currently that even the tech-aware are, well, unaware at its speed, and what the coming social effects will be.
- brandon272 10y ago
  > AI and automation are both advancing so fast In what ways/areas are they advancing fast?
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    https://www.wired.com/2015/01/ai-arrived-really-worries-worlds-brightest-minds/ https://www.wired.com/2015/01/ai-arrived-really-worries-worl... and https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-28/how-advances-automation-will-change-future-work https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-28/how-advances-automati... will get you started.
sgift 10y ago
The agenda that everyone should have the option to not be homeless? These socialists ... now they even use reality for their evil plans.

pyrale 10y ago

The NYT article is quite lucid about it. They do argue that this gigantic wall should not be avoided, but dealt with through legislation and better sharing of wealth. That's a pretty logical answer, and they support it with good examples of past policies to ease the social pain of economic changes.

esahione 10y ago
I don't think that they quite grasp or explain the enormity of it. The two biggest strongholds humans have against automation are thought and manual, but complex, labor. Soon they will all be automated.
- haissam 10y ago
  > Soon they will all be automated. and that's all good and fine, as long as the wealth created by the robots is redistributed and not funneled to a handful of executives' bank accounts in tax havens.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Who honestly thinks this extra value will be captured by more than the tiniest handful of already-rich people?
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      If that's the case then it will probably devour itself, you can't have business without customers.
- pyrale 10y ago
  > I don't think that they quite grasp or explain the enormity of it. I believe they do. They just remember people (and we all should) that this was supposed to be the pinnacle of our society, and not it's darkest hour.

nickgrosvenor 10y ago

No, that's a theory. Most kids coming out of college will go into careers their grandparents have never even heard of or don't understand. That's the way it's always been, while old jobs get replaced by technology, new jobs get created. It's not unique to this generation.

maxerickson 10y ago
Grandparents aren't that dumb. Go dig up US employment statistics (BLS is good source). There are a lot of people doing jobs that are really easy to describe. "Driver". "Clerk". And so on.
- kefka 10y ago
  Not only that, but if you describe something very minutely and exacting, it will seem very difficult. But if you describe it as "A game with 2 opposing sides, with a shared oblong ball, and each team tries to get it to the other side past their opponents." And I just described US football.
esahione 10y ago
When has thought ever been automated before? When have we had a tool that can build tools? How can capitalism survive with 80+% unemployment? It's as inevitable as gravity.
Baeocystin 10y ago
"That's the way it's always been" works great, right up until it doesn't. History is full of periods of great upheaval, and there's no reason to think those are over, either. This is a problem we need to pay attention to.
root_axis 10y ago
> while old jobs get replaced by technology, new jobs get created. But always significantly fewer than before, that's the entire point of the technology, to reduce the number of humans needed for the process.

alkonaut 10y ago

I don't think Universal income is necessary but a more complete redistribution system would certainly be needed. At the very least one in which e.g healthcare isn't tied to employment, for example.

DickingAround 10y ago

There is no one to entrust UBI to. It will rapidly stop being universal or basic as people pervert it with exceptions. Controlling everyone's income will attract the greatest power mongers the world has ever seen. Perhaps the unspoken honest answer is that people without other assets are going to live in 'poverty' (compared to the rich); their brains will operate at better watts-per-compute than the computers for a long time and still be worth something. They will earn a living on this. The people that do have assets (e.g. own the robots), are going to be extravagantly wealthy. It will be a feudalism but without violence, seniorage, or other expectation that the poor work for the good to the rich. Just that there's going to be really poor and really rich. I and my kids will almost certainly be left behind in this. I am not an asset owner. But I will not attack my neighbor for their wealth. I will not turn over my ability to live to some bureaucrat who steals it from the rich and will eventually make me dance and beg for it. Let the rich asset owners go to the stars even if I will not be joining them. Better to have some of us get ahead than hold all back trying to leave no one behind.

nickgrosvenor 10y ago
Your predictions are at least 50 years too soon, and several unknowable things will occur between here and there
- DickingAround 10y ago
  Agreed. But if I have to show some world given the current trajectory, that's my best bet.
  - nickgrosvenor 10y ago
    My favorite story is Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. He got the best futurists money can buy to predict what the near future would be. They had all sorts of strange interfaces and ideas. Newspapers with screens on them, etc. It was just 3 years before the iPhone came out...
kefka 10y ago
Who else to entrust UBI to than not-humans? We're talking of robots getting us in this mess, along with extreme automation of everything. Well, lets start looking into automating government. We have a lot of cruft and crap in our governmental system. Layers upon layers of laws, bureaucrats deciding on felonies. And it's even worse, where we really don't know the boundary of the law. And even less so if you're rich. So, what would it take to automate law itself?I'm not talking of the judicial, but executive and legislative seems simpler to target for excision and replacement.

baursak 10y ago

> I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism. Nitpick. UBI is not socialism. It's still capitalism.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

The people the article is discussing are already receiving a free money and do not need to work. How will writing "basic income" rather than "disability" or "welfare" on top of the check change anything?

Arizhel 10y ago
Simple: with UBI, you can eliminate a gigantic amount of bureaucracy in administering those programs. How much time and money is wasted in employing armies of public servants to go chase after welfare recipients and make sure they aren't "cheating" by making money somehow, or that disability recipients aren't "cheating" by not being as disabled as they claim? It doesn't help that welfare punishes people who want to work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  So the current leisure class will not be helped at all by a BI, relative to what they already have. Since you think a BI will save money, could you do a back of the envelope calculation illustrating how that would work? I can't see how (for example) 10M on welfare + 1M administrators could possibly be cheaper than 100M on welfare.
  - oftenwrong 10y ago
    Relevant: If We Can Afford Our Current Welfare System, We Can Afford Basic Income https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-can-afford-our-current-welfare-system-we-can-afford-basic-income-9ae9b5f186af#.2yyq7pacn https://medium.com/basic-income/if-we-can-afford-our-current...
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Those numbers suggest about 10% overhead. Giving free money to 900% more people in order to save 10% on overhead is not a cost saving strategy. Your article proves my point, even though it goes to great effort not to admit that.

stcredzero 10y ago

One of the least communist solutions I've thought of is a quasi-capitalistic economic system. The US and various countries around the world have this. That is, let's socialize part of every company's profits but not management. In other words, taxes? Your "government pays for shares to get money" scheme will be gamed as much as the current tax code is.

esahione 10y ago
There's zero chance our political spectrum will ever increase taxes to allow for UBI to be widespread and sufficient. This way we compensate innovators and entrepreneurs for their work. That is, we give them the leeway to innovate, improve their own income, etc. It's a lot more palatable than 'let's tax everyone at 85%'.
- alexc05 10y ago
  I think that's a very Ayn Rand / Atlas Shrugged type of analysis. I also think that falls short of accounting for the full spectrum of human behavior. There are numerous innovators, artists and creators who are driven by more than financial rewards. If there was a re-balancing of economic priorities, I'm not sure I agree that 'innovation would stop' (which isn't precisely what you said, so forgive the straw man). On the whole I think you might see different people driving the world forward, but you wouldn't see the world stop. Larry Page tinkered with computers before he knew he was going to be a bajillionaire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page. Would Zuckerberg still have created thefacebook? What about all those school-teachers who give everything they have for a $30k salary (and hugs from snotty faced kids)? I may be misreading your point - so forgive me if that's true - but there are a lot of places where BI is making and is moving forward. They're also doing it without the 85% tax rate you're quoting.
- sp332 10y ago
  I'm not sure what that middle part means. A lot of businesses were started recently that would not have been viable without the ACA. If we expand the safety net, more people can take chances, and there will be more (in absolute numbers) wild successes which can be taxed to fund the safety nets. There's probably diminishing returns somewhere but I don't think we're near it yet.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>The gigantic wall of AI/Automation is unavoidable Well, we've had the automated IT-based office for decades and the cries of everyone losing their jobs didn't really happen, not the paperless office. I certainly see AI changing things, but these hysterical futurist articles tend to lean more pie-in-the-sky techies than managerial types. Managers and executives know that employment, today, is a mostly a fiction. A lot of what drives employment could be automated right now, but isn't for political reasons. Not the least of which is internal company politics on having as many direct reports under you as the threat of becoming a 'small' department means becoming eliminated by outsourcing or in-sourced/absorbed by another department or simply a loss of prestige. The idea that employment numbers are purely meritoriousness is fairly questionable. Its bureaucratic and political primarily. The larger issue is, how much will this change things from the norm from a reasonable perspective. We can't automate most things and that probably means a certain class of jobs will be threatened but most will be fine. So even if that doubles or triples unemployment, that means we have unemployment rates closer to European economies or perhaps higher, but still doable without a radical restructuring of our economy. The futurist dream of 100% unemployment in ten years and everyone on UBI simply isn't happening. My worry is that we'd probably need a very liberal government to handle this as it will put it quite the load on welfare, but currently the US has a radical conservative administration as well as a conservative congress, which means the political fight to raise taxes and expand welfare for displaced workers is going to be tough or impossible. The problem is that angry voters put in isolationists and those who they perceive have and can build wealth, but those types of people are often very anti-social services and very anti-welfare. So the voters took a big gamble. They think the Trump admin will 'fix' jobs. Jobs that are destined to go away. But if he fails, and he probably will, then they will lack the social safety net to fall back on. Those in vulnerable industries, often in rural and less urbanized communities, simply voted the wrong way and most likely will be punished economically for it.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
"Well, we've had the automated IT-based office for decades and the cries of everyone losing their jobs didn't really happen, not the paperless office." I'm sure I read in the economist that the number of people doing office work has been falling for some time.

devoply 10y ago

> Capitalism will destroy capitalism as we know it. Capitalism will not destroy itself. Capitalism will reach its conclusion. We should let it. Herald the dawn of the new age.

antisthenes 10y ago
Harold is a ghoul with a tree growing out of his head. Herald is the word you were looking for.

alexc05 10y ago

So my Girlfriend (Monica) is currently doing her Master's at UPENN in social-policy & data science. Her major area of research and focus is on the impact of technological unemployment (which is an umbrella term which represents job loss due to robots and AI) (we're currently looking for an internship by the way, so if you're in this area, please feel free to reach out!) Some of the estimates of job-losses approach >50% which, for context, the great depression was 15% to 25% So we're looking at the rough equivalent of 2 to 3 great depressions in terms of unemployment, but productivity should be equal or higher. A lot of the solutions being looked at center around basic income, but there are some really interesting questions around BI like "how do we help people deal with the emotional impact of 'freeloading'?" or "how do we deal with 'life without purpose'?" She's thrown out some interesting solutions (I think). There is expected to be a lot of focus on subsidized training. One sort-of "out there" idea which I don't think I've heard anywhere was 'framing' the BI payments as a 'royalty' on the data they provide merely by existing. Since marketing, science and government with the help of big-data tracks everyone so deeply then turns around and re-sells that data, the people being reported on 'deserve a royalty' on the data they provide. (I'm paraphrasing and she is way smarter than me, so the way she put it was a lot more convincing). If you're looking for more information on the coming tsunami of technological unemployment there were some incredibly interesting whitepapers published by the white-house on the policy impact of this stuff. PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - oct 2016 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/whitehouse_files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/preparing_for_the_future_of_ai.pdf https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/whi... Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy - dec 2016 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/fi... Monica's papers really echoed those whitehouse ones, though she hasn't published any of them yet, but the professors seem interested in publishing with her on a few things. Anyways, this stuff really is a pretty big deal. You'll see Elon Musk talking about the 50% unemployment figure and the need for BI. Who knows where today's whitehouse is going to go on this stuff, but we're really going to have to be prepared. Ontario Canada is kicking off a project in this now and a few other countries around the world have pilots brewing.

massysett 10y ago

mrfusion 10y ago

Your idea sounds interesting but I thinks it's equivalent to a corporate tax. It's basically identical if you think about it.

esahione 10y ago
They aren't equivalent. While both may give identical cash-flows, one has a financial outlay in the beginning while the other has a political outlay. I just don't think it is likely that the current political class in America will raise taxes to the levels necessary to subsidize UBI.

MR4D 10y ago

I agree with most of your comments. However, I wouldn't think of this as a capitalist-communist spectrum. In fact, I wouldn't think of either of them as long term solutions in this future. What both systems have in common is that they are built around scarcity. For capitalism, it is a method of price discovery. For communism, it is rationing by the state ("From each according to his ability..."). When there is no more scarcity, then there is no more need for either price discovery or for rationing.* Therefore, will need to create a new economic model that is not built on scarcity. *Footnote - there are some things that will always be scare, such as location. Having a view of a calm beach, or of boundless nature, or a city skyline will always have a scarcity issue. It will be interesting to see how that scarcity is dealt with in this future.

norea-armozel 10y ago

I think in part your solution is on the right track but not the complete answer (hell, I don't think I have a complete answer myself). In my opinion, the additional work would need to be done to focus on further decentralization of governments and businesses since both have been on a trend toward further centralized bureaucracies that rarely respond to their respect stakeholders (citizens and consumers). In my view that would mean businesses should be held in common by the workers as a term of employment. Think of it was a credit union but you just happen to work there. Entrepreneurs and managers will always be in the mix of this because honestly individuals sometimes get good ideas but they shouldn't be off the hook with incredibly vast sums of wealth as to allow them to create their own fiefdoms. After all, they too are just one person in an ocean of people. What's funny about this idea is that it's not mine. I remember a long time ago that I use to go on a web forum on the New Speak Dictionary site. The site owner styled himself a Libertarian Syndicalist and he espoused very similar views here. I think it's inevitable that this might become the normal state of things if people become aware of this possible alternative to centralized state vs centralized business.

chillwaves 10y ago
This sounds like the definition of socialism.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  In as much as it's pre-Marxist and pre-Utopian socialism, sure. But if you told a hardline ML that this was socialism they'd probably call you a deviationist or some other buzz word.

fnord123 10y ago

>I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism. UBC without any social contract in place may further allow immigrants to be alienated into language communities. Alienation breeds ill sentiment. I really wonder what the solution should be.

deleted 10y ago

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openasocket 10y ago

I think the fallacy here is similar to Malthusianism in the 19th century. In that case the problem was the assumption that agricultural yields wouldn't improve over time, and your argument is assuming that improving technology won't create more jobs than it obsoletes. We're not going to wind up with companies that consist of just a CEO and a dozen factories. (NOTE: than I'm only talking about automation, not the creation of hard AI, which you allude to. That's a whole other kettle of fish)

georgeecollins 10y ago

The point the article is making is that the changes in income distribution so far is not due to robots, it is due to policy decisions that can be changed. The impact of automation is a profound topic. But it doesn't preclude us from making the policy change that would have altered income distribution in the last ten years, and the next ten years as well.

widowlark 10y ago

Capitalism is supposed to cannibalize itself.

pokemongoaway 10y ago

A primary focus should be on overthrowing the military industrial complex, which seems to be the source of a lot of waste - both of human focus and capital. Anyone doing their research will reach the conclusion that there are many factors of misalignment and sabotage within the US government. If the US didn't have its fingers in so many other governments, then it would be safer to ignore this fact.

Arizhel 10y ago
>A primary focus should be on overthrowing the military industrial complex, which seems to be the source of a lot of waste... If the US didn't have its fingers in so many other governments, then it would be safer to ignore this fact. The only problem I have with this idea is that, if the US weren't the superpower pulling strings, surely someone else (Russia or China) would be. Would that be any better for the world? How much waste was there during Soviet times, when so many nations had so little productivity under Soviet management, and their economies were closed to the rest of the world? Personally, I'd rather see a more equal alliance among western nations, but for some reason that just doesn't seem to be happening.
- pokemongoaway 10y ago
  We can have the conversation about which country (if any) should be the leader of the free world once we have liberated the facts about the US military industry complex's world influence to a mainstream status.

u_wot_m8 10y ago

end game will be massive population reduction. Universal income doesn't change the fact that our resources are finite and humans reproduce exponentially. UNs top agenda is population control, read between the lines.

mac01021 10y ago
The UN? Which lines am I supposed to be reading between?

RandyRanderson 10y ago

"Capitalism will destroy capitalism", very good! Maybe it always does by definition?