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I don't understand the constant focus on the upcoming automation crunch. Efficiency improvements (through automation and otherwise) have been happening over the

I don't understand the constant focus on the upcoming automation crunch. Efficiency improvements (through automation and otherwise) have been happening over the past several decades - more output with less jobs - where the majority of the benefits go to the owners of the clockwork. Now we're in a situation where we produce most goods that society needs (and a lot that we don't need) yet there are fewer jobs. This is absolutely going to get worse, but we shouldn't be thinking of robots as any different to the market forces that have been going on for years. Something has to give.

macawfish 10y ago
People like Ray Kurzweil prophecy about a time when human "intelligence" is replaced in value. But what about human work? It is something deeper and at least as precious, our freedom to be physically integrated with one another and and with the physical environment we are embedded in. Karl Marx, etc already wrote about a kind of devastating "singularity" that is here and now at the roots of many social, physical and spiritual ills.
- musha68k 10y ago
  Aristotle would have been OK with that. Work simply is "non-leisure" and therefore shouldn't be aspired to per-se. As per Josef Pieper – it's all about leisure. School especially so: "The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean leisure." In this potential world of abundant leisure we just need to get back to good old sharing – because sharing means caring!
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    I doubt the multi billionares are going to be open to the idea of sharing.
  - rubidium 10y ago
    Never thought I'd see Pieper referenced on HN. Great point and reference. For everyone else, Leisure the basis of culture is worth reading and relevant here. But finding a realistic economic system where the benefits of automation don't just benefit the top x% and lead to a morlocks and Eloi society is HARD!
    - RobertoG 10y ago
      It's not so hard to find it, it just it sounds too much as socialism. There are all kind of possible ideas. Just the other day I read about, instead of taxing corporations, make that a minority percentage is owned by the society. Not without its problems, but sounds like it would line up some bad incentives that we see now in action. At the end of the day, we always go back to who owns the means of production. As is always the case with humans, change it's not going to happen until we are in real trouble. Maybe not even then.
  - flukus 10y ago
    I'm not sure if we should be taking lessons from people who's leisure time was created from slavery. Arisotle was the ancient equialent of billionaires who's family can live forever off of interest/investments
    - mfukar 10y ago
      Aristotle's contemporaries who claimed "nature has made nobody a slave" also held similar, if not the same, views on leisure. Of course, you could argue all Athenians really took others into slavery by virtue of war, or their unquestioned military superiority of the time. The question is, is hypocrisy actually contradictory to Aristotle's views? I think not.
  - dkersten 10y ago
    because sharing means caring! I thought sharing meant copyright infringement! ;-)
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I'd say both, and that's why I think we need to loosen up on the copyrights a bit :). Too much "intellectual property" protection is harmful to society.
bsder 10y ago
> I don't understand the constant focus on the upcoming automation crunch. Efficiency improvements (through automation and otherwise) have been happening over the past several decades - more output with less jobs - where the majority of the benefits go to the owners of the clockwork. Before, automation only impacted the jobs of blue collar workers so nobody cared. Now it impacts the jobs of white collar workers so everybody is starting to whine.
- vacri 10y ago
  To be fair, I think a modern day professional carpenter would much rather work with modern power tools than what carpenters had to use at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Modern-day miners much prefer using their heavy machinery than swinging a pickaxe and pushing a trolley. I can't see many modern-day blue-collar workers volunteering to go back to the old ways in order to increase employment counts.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    Pretty sure the carpenter will complain when anything made w/ wood can just be put through a 3d 'wood' printer and come out flawless, or a device that basically can take a block of wood, or 4x4s and construct just about anything without any human intervention. Won't be long before mining operations are all manned by drones and not a single human. This isn't sci-fi, it's near-future tech.
    - flukus 10y ago
      Mining is already there, bringing a mine online is human intensive, but when that's done most of the mining is automated.
      - candiodari 10y ago
        But when AIs start to program we as programmers have a simple solution : we simply bring them into a meeting with marketing and product management and let the result natural suicidal impulse take care of those suckers.
deelowe 10y ago
We have an individual sitting in the leadership position for the most powerful nation on earth who won on promises that he will build a literal wall across the border based on FUD regarding illegal immigrants taking the jobs of workers in the nation. This happened despite the fact that the number of illegal immigrants is on a steep decline. People are not reacting rationally to what's going on. That is the concern.
- ianai 10y ago
  Maybe people don't react rationally? Maybe we wind up in a world where you don't want to be in anything remotely seeming part of the government. Think French Revolution.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Kaizyn 10y ago
The new focus on the 'automation push' is for political reasons and not for any other real concerns. Ask yourself what changes in society are being agitated for the most? What is being put forward for the solution to the automation push? It is not very different than the political handling of man-made global warming. The solution is for affluent nations like the US to reduce its standard of living and cede more control to international bodies. We can debate the merits of the science all we want, but the solution put forward promotes a pre-determined political agenda. We're seeing the same type of thing starting now with the talk of the automation crunch. Ideas like UBI are declared the solution and a shift to greater reliance on government because we will all soon be unable to have good enough jobs to look after ourselves.
- coolgeek 10y ago
  > The solution is for affluent nations like the US to reduce its standard of living and cede more control to international bodies. We can debate the merits of the science all we want, but the solution put forward promotes a pre-determined political agenda Where is this solution put forward? By what politicians is this "political handling" being done? What legislation has been proposed, let alone passed?
pilsetnieks 10y ago
> we shouldn't be thinking of robots as any different to the market forces that have been going on for years It's not that they're so different as such; it's the scale and speed of change that's different.

macawfish 10y ago

People like Ray Kurzweil prophecy about a time when human "intelligence" is replaced in value. But what about human work? It is something deeper and at least as precious, our freedom to be physically integrated with one another and and with the physical environment we are embedded in. Karl Marx, etc already wrote about a kind of devastating "singularity" that is here and now at the roots of many social, physical and spiritual ills.

musha68k 10y ago
Aristotle would have been OK with that. Work simply is "non-leisure" and therefore shouldn't be aspired to per-se. As per Josef Pieper – it's all about leisure. School especially so: "The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean leisure." In this potential world of abundant leisure we just need to get back to good old sharing – because sharing means caring!
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  I doubt the multi billionares are going to be open to the idea of sharing.
- rubidium 10y ago
  Never thought I'd see Pieper referenced on HN. Great point and reference. For everyone else, Leisure the basis of culture is worth reading and relevant here. But finding a realistic economic system where the benefits of automation don't just benefit the top x% and lead to a morlocks and Eloi society is HARD!
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    It's not so hard to find it, it just it sounds too much as socialism. There are all kind of possible ideas. Just the other day I read about, instead of taxing corporations, make that a minority percentage is owned by the society. Not without its problems, but sounds like it would line up some bad incentives that we see now in action. At the end of the day, we always go back to who owns the means of production. As is always the case with humans, change it's not going to happen until we are in real trouble. Maybe not even then.
- flukus 10y ago
  I'm not sure if we should be taking lessons from people who's leisure time was created from slavery. Arisotle was the ancient equialent of billionaires who's family can live forever off of interest/investments
  - mfukar 10y ago
    Aristotle's contemporaries who claimed "nature has made nobody a slave" also held similar, if not the same, views on leisure. Of course, you could argue all Athenians really took others into slavery by virtue of war, or their unquestioned military superiority of the time. The question is, is hypocrisy actually contradictory to Aristotle's views? I think not.
- dkersten 10y ago
  because sharing means caring! I thought sharing meant copyright infringement! ;-)
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I'd say both, and that's why I think we need to loosen up on the copyrights a bit :). Too much "intellectual property" protection is harmful to society.

bsder 10y ago

> I don't understand the constant focus on the upcoming automation crunch. Efficiency improvements (through automation and otherwise) have been happening over the past several decades - more output with less jobs - where the majority of the benefits go to the owners of the clockwork. Before, automation only impacted the jobs of blue collar workers so nobody cared. Now it impacts the jobs of white collar workers so everybody is starting to whine.

vacri 10y ago
To be fair, I think a modern day professional carpenter would much rather work with modern power tools than what carpenters had to use at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Modern-day miners much prefer using their heavy machinery than swinging a pickaxe and pushing a trolley. I can't see many modern-day blue-collar workers volunteering to go back to the old ways in order to increase employment counts.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  Pretty sure the carpenter will complain when anything made w/ wood can just be put through a 3d 'wood' printer and come out flawless, or a device that basically can take a block of wood, or 4x4s and construct just about anything without any human intervention. Won't be long before mining operations are all manned by drones and not a single human. This isn't sci-fi, it's near-future tech.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Mining is already there, bringing a mine online is human intensive, but when that's done most of the mining is automated.
    - candiodari 10y ago
      But when AIs start to program we as programmers have a simple solution : we simply bring them into a meeting with marketing and product management and let the result natural suicidal impulse take care of those suckers.

deelowe 10y ago

We have an individual sitting in the leadership position for the most powerful nation on earth who won on promises that he will build a literal wall across the border based on FUD regarding illegal immigrants taking the jobs of workers in the nation. This happened despite the fact that the number of illegal immigrants is on a steep decline. People are not reacting rationally to what's going on. That is the concern.

ianai 10y ago
Maybe people don't react rationally? Maybe we wind up in a world where you don't want to be in anything remotely seeming part of the government. Think French Revolution.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Kaizyn 10y ago

The new focus on the 'automation push' is for political reasons and not for any other real concerns. Ask yourself what changes in society are being agitated for the most? What is being put forward for the solution to the automation push? It is not very different than the political handling of man-made global warming. The solution is for affluent nations like the US to reduce its standard of living and cede more control to international bodies. We can debate the merits of the science all we want, but the solution put forward promotes a pre-determined political agenda. We're seeing the same type of thing starting now with the talk of the automation crunch. Ideas like UBI are declared the solution and a shift to greater reliance on government because we will all soon be unable to have good enough jobs to look after ourselves.

coolgeek 10y ago
> The solution is for affluent nations like the US to reduce its standard of living and cede more control to international bodies. We can debate the merits of the science all we want, but the solution put forward promotes a pre-determined political agenda Where is this solution put forward? By what politicians is this "political handling" being done? What legislation has been proposed, let alone passed?

pilsetnieks 10y ago

> we shouldn't be thinking of robots as any different to the market forces that have been going on for years It's not that they're so different as such; it's the scale and speed of change that's different.