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> How many will care if artificial intelligence destroys life if it has already destroyed meaning? This line sounds deep, but I think it incorrectly conflates

• harryh 10y ago
  Didn't elite aristocrats in previous centuries spend a lot of time sleeping with each others spouses and playing arbitrary power games? Looking to them as a source of what a post work world could look like isn't particularly inspiring.
  • komali2 10y ago
    I mean, there are plenty of very happy people sleeping with eachother's spouses right now. Debauchery can be fun in it's own right.
• Banthum 10y ago
  It's interesting that your counterexample - doing art - is indeed a form of work. Because it is. Doing good art is painfully hard work, in fact. There's nothing in principle that stops a machine from creating art. Even, better art than any person could do. So once that happens, where are we left? Meaning isn't something physical in the universe. Meaning is an emotion. It's what you feel when you're working towards something that you believe has some greater importance. With all opportunity to work towards anything taken away, life will become meaningless by definition, unless humans are left with some pseudo-artificial challenges to push against. Zookeepers put the animals' food inside a metal box with a small hole, so the animals have to do work to get it out. It's good for the animals to have something to work towards, and they're too dumb to realize they're being manipulated. Maybe that's our future. With WoW and Clash of Clans, etc, sometimes it feels like we're already halfway there.
  • petra 10y ago
    Meaning isn't an emotion. Meaning is a story. A story we tell ourselves, over and over again, until we forget it is a lie.
    • dwaltrip 10y ago
      Only in the fairly reductionist view that every human thought is a "lie" [1]. There is some meaning in this idea, but it clearly bulldozes over lots of useful distinctions that can be made when considering​ all human thought. [1] This brings to mind the famous quote: "The map is not the territory" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation#.22The_map_is_not_the_territory.22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation#.22Th...
  • zepto 10y ago
    Art has meaning which is why humans find it interesting. Are you therefore saying that machines can create meaning that is interesting to humans?
    • notduncansmith 10y ago
      It's absolutely possible for machines to point out things no human had thought about before.
      • zepto 10y ago
        Is that all meaning is to you? Especially the kind of meaning embodied by art? Reductive definitions don't seem to contribute much to these kinds of discussion.
        • ori_b 10y ago
          I've heard people speak about how they find meaning in nature. If a random process can manage, why not a computer?
• 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Yeah, I didn't like that conclusion either. I mean, it sort of paints too rosy of a picture of the Human Condition. Just winging it but I'm pretty sure about 80% of the world's population doesn't get far past the "How do I not die?" biological response, and has but fleeting concern for what one might ascribe to "Meaning." Well, that and the line is kind of tone deaf in not acknowledging Religion gives people Meaning in their lives by way of Beliefs.
• dingbat 10y ago
  > I think a better question is if society can adapt quick enough to fill the void left by the absence of work. i think that question has been answered to some degree by research (cant pinpoint off top of my head) which seems to indicate that generally humans fill that void by watching more TV and sleeping. i think its idealistic to think that people will suddenly become creative and culturally inclined.
  • jstanley 10y ago
    > generally humans fill that void by watching more TV and sleeping The good news is they're only wasting their life for themselves. Those of us that enjoy other pursuits are still free to enjoy them, regardless of how many people are watching TV and sleeping.
    • malandrew 10y ago
      We've reached the point where more people are arguing that access to X is a fundamental human right, where X is something that requires resources and labor to provide. As the breadth of what is socially argued to be a human right increases, you'll find that those working to provide the labor and capital will be increasingly deprived of the fruits of their labor to provide for those who are sitting around watching TV. There are many leisure activities I would like to partake in and would be able to partake in if so much of my income didn't go to taxes. I'm not saying all taxes are bad, but the scope of what taxes are increased to support only increases under a democracy. A democracy will always result in the election of those individuals that promise to give benefits for free, when thevtruth is that the benefits will increasingly come from those in the minority. I currently still think a democracy or republic are the best form of government compared to others that have been tried because it prevents abuses by a few against many, but it fails to prevent abuses of the many against a few. I'm not sure how we can achieve a governmental form that generay prevents abuses in both directions.
      • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        In this automated world, that traditional viewpoint is rapidly becoming incorrect. That is, it doesn't require any person's resources or labor to provide much of what we consume. Its automated pretty much bottom to top. As for the money, in transforming an agrarian barter economy to a modern one the USA had good use for a cash system for 200 years. But what about when the only obstacle to gaining essentially free goods is, a capitalist holding them hostage? Its all starting to break down. Anyway, even a cursory examination of the foundations of the UBI initiative show that it pretty much pays for itself. The knee-jerk "I don't want to pay for other people to sit around" complaint is uninformed and obsolete.
• JDiculous 10y ago
  The idea that I need other people to tell me what to do (which is generally what a paid job is) to have meaning in life is insulting.
  • akvadrako 10y ago
    Well, it less insulting to say your work has to matter to somebody besides yourself. Living only for yourself is really a dead-end and arbitrary endeavour. I personally find it meaningless. Not everything valuable is recognised or rewarded with money, I'll give you that.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      It's more complex than that. I've been utterly bored by most of the jobs I had simply because while it mattered to someone else (as proven by me getting paid for doing it), I couldn't see how it was useful to anybody besides lining the pockets of my boss and their customer. Maybe I'm weird, but I want to be able to point at my work and say that it helped someone to make the world a little bit better, and not just to earn someone more cash.
• petra 10y ago
  I see no real issue. If millions of pensioners and potheads can find meaning without work, quite rapidly, we'll do OK. Oh and btw, work bringing meaning? many jobs don't.
  • rjtavares 10y ago
    Individuals are certainly able to do ok without work, as long as their basic needs are met. However, I have doubts about the will of "society" to provide for their basic needs unconditionally. Consider the type of arguments made in the US about healthcare, or the comments made by Europe's elite about countries wasting money on "drinks and women"[0] [0] - http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/22/dijsselbloem-under-fire-after-saying-southern-europe-wasted-money-on-drinks-and-women.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/22/dijsselbloem-under-fire-after...
• komali2 10y ago
  Work is only meaningful for me because I get to create things that other people use and talk to me about. That's why I became an engineer - I was doing recruitment before, it was awful because I knew I wasn't adding value, just filling a gap. There was no creation or real feedback, just numbers and phone calls. The only fun part of that was the networking and learning from my engineering candidates. I recommend trying out the Culture series. Imagine a universe where humans are definitely useless because hundred kilometer long spaceships are controlled by unimaginably intelligent AI "Minds." The humans find meaning by playing games, exploring the universe, but most consistently, being academics. They get on the ground and investigate other cultures and do that human thing - provide unique interpretations. The Minds don't lack personality - they can form their own opinions and interpretations - but humans get meaning simply by immersing themselves in the research and work itself. I'm getting offtrack here, but funnily enough I often become frustrated because these books focus so much on the humans, when something very much outside their reach is occurring and is more interesting to me. For example, in one book, an object enters the universe seemingly out of nowhere, and is utterly inexplicable by the Minds. But Ian m Banks for some reason spends time telling a human love story in the midst of this - why should I care! Tell me more about what the Minds are doing about a thing they can't explain, a first in the history of the universe for them! TLDR my rambling post - humans will find meaning, whether or not that meaning is also the means by which they are able to eat (salary work).
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > For example, in one book, an object enters the universe seemingly out of nowhere, and is utterly inexplicable by the Minds. But Ian m Banks for some reason spends time telling a human love story in the midst of this - why should I care! Tell me more about what the Minds are doing about a thing they can't explain, a first in the history of the universe for them! Tangential to the topic of the article, but I share your feelings here. I hate it when sci-fi authors focus too much on people. As I like to say, if I wanted to read about complexities of interpersonal relationships, I'd pick a romance novel.
• bambax 10y ago
  > I don't think the elite aristocrats in previous centuries had any problem with not working. Exactly. And they were not doing any kind of "art" either, for the most part. They went hunting. Sometimes they made war to one another (usually, only in spring and early summer, because the rest of the year, war was too inconvenient). They had intrigues (who slept with whom). I fail to see how work as it is currently understood, ie a 9-5 job, has any connection to any kind of "meaning". Life is already meaningless; but it's unpleasant. If we can make it more pleasant by having machines do the work, how is this bad?
• ryandrake 10y ago
  Society will adapt, but in a silly way. If there comes a time where there truly isn't a need for large swaths of the population to work, society (government) will just make up work for them. Half the population gets paid to dig holes and the other half gets paid to fill them in. We're never going to beat this unnecessary puritanical mindset that a living is something that must be earned through work, and that there is something morally wrong with people who don't work.
• unprepare 10y ago
  Art is a good one, people will always pursue art regardless of whether or not 'better art' already exists. I would add Exploration. Getting into space has never been cheaper or safer, and there is vast opportunity in space for everything imaginable, resources, scientific knowledge, new discoveries, new challenges, etc. We dont seem to be satisfied as a race with robots doing our exploration for us up til now, i dont see why that would change in the future. Humans want other humans to be on the surface of these planets making discoveries, not some robot slowly rolling around a desert taking dirt samples for a decade.
• sanderjd 10y ago
  Does it appear likely to you that the direction we are headed is such that everyone who is automated out of work will be like aristocrats, with their needs so fully met that they may live a life of the leisures of their choosing? It appears far more likely to me that they will instead be begging for scraps from an increasingly small and concentrated class of wealthy folks who do not respect them because they do not work. Your idea of a world full of aristocrats may be a nice one, but the world I see when I look around doesn't bear much resemblance to it.