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I disagree entirely. Yes, someone has to service the robots. But it will be significantly fewer people doing that than were doing the job that the robots took o

by s73ver 9y ago

I disagree entirely. Yes, someone has to service the robots. But it will be significantly fewer people doing that than were doing the job that the robots took over. Bootcamps/Treehouse can be a thing, but while you do that bootcamp, you still have a mortgage to pay, a family to feed and clothe, etc. Where's that money gonna come from? Basic income is going to be required in the future. Otherwise we're going to be in an Hunger Games dystopian future.

Applejinx 9y ago
Yep. Think of it this way: in order to have a functioning consumption economy in any sense, people have to have an economic vote. It becomes their 'job' to select which things thrive within the market-based system. This has its own problems, but the ideology isn't really as dependent upon each person serving a necessary role inside the 'production of goods' system as you think. It's as if power was generated only by exercise bicycles hooked to dynamos, and then solar was invented. Or if transportation was powered only by humans and animals such as horses, and then the internal combustion engine was invented. We literally don't even have as many horses living in the world as we used to: no need for 'em. And those that do live, live under generally better conditions, because their labor is worthless and they're valued for other reasons (and in smaller numbers). The future might look more like that. Steady attrition of humans, and improved conditions… but as pets and exotic animals, not as beasts of labor.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  Added thought: the downside of this is obvious. In that robot future, why would we have to give a crap what HUMANS thought of goods and services? Things might evolve to suit what the robots and AIs like, in which case human input is about as useful as asking horses about highways. "This sucks, it makes my hooves hurt!" um, it's kinda not meant for you, Dobbin…
seanp2k2 9y ago
Someone also has to design, program, update, coordinate, and negotiate things around the robots. I admit that I haven't built out a map of a person + support services vs a robot, but I don't think it's suddenly an order of magnitude less jobs, it's just that the jobs will be different. There are some societal standards which are hard to change, such as the preference of some to have a human cashier ring them up at the grocery store. I personally prefer the scanner tables, since I can do it quickly and there's typically less of a line, but at e.g. Safeway and Home Depot, half the time they're out of order. Target doesn't always have them and Whole Foods doesn't have them (in ones I've been to). Self-checkouts have been in stores for at least 15 years ( http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/15/business/fi-scanner15 http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/15/business/fi-scanner1... ), yet there aren't replacing many cashiers, and the trend I've noticed lately is away from them. My point is that it's fun to think about, but I think we're many decades away from having to worry about robots replacing a majority of minimum-wage jobs, and it might not even be worth it to automate some of these things until minimum wage is much higher. Another example I can think of is a table busser at a restaurant. It'd be hard to make a robot who could operate as smoothly in tight quarters as a human, not spilling stuff everywhere and making lots of noise. You'd basically need design a restaurant around automation, not the other way 'round. You could also just design a counter-service restaurant where people take their own dishes to a tub, which is a lot less involved than maintaining a fleet of dish bots. Diners might also scoff at (or be amazed by, or both) robots cleaning stuff around them while eating. Industrial robots I've seen aren't very pretty or clean. Do you think that the Knightscope bots clean and wax their own exteriors? At that point, do you pay someone to clean the robots or just have them clean the tables? Or clean the robot with another robot-washing robot. This might work in Star Wars, but even there, Chewie and Han did the wrenching; R2 just helped them diagnose it. Again, my point is that I doubt there will be less stuff to do in the future, just hopefully higher-value stuff. If you look at history and as other commenters have mentioned, e.g. the move from subsistence farming to increasingly more automation, workers go from picking vegetables to other hopefully more desirable jobs (maybe driving a fork lift to load the boxes of produce into trucks).

by s73ver 9y ago

Applejinx 9y ago

Yep. Think of it this way: in order to have a functioning consumption economy in any sense, people have to have an economic vote. It becomes their 'job' to select which things thrive within the market-based system. This has its own problems, but the ideology isn't really as dependent upon each person serving a necessary role inside the 'production of goods' system as you think. It's as if power was generated only by exercise bicycles hooked to dynamos, and then solar was invented. Or if transportation was powered only by humans and animals such as horses, and then the internal combustion engine was invented. We literally don't even have as many horses living in the world as we used to: no need for 'em. And those that do live, live under generally better conditions, because their labor is worthless and they're valued for other reasons (and in smaller numbers). The future might look more like that. Steady attrition of humans, and improved conditions… but as pets and exotic animals, not as beasts of labor.

Applejinx 9y ago
Added thought: the downside of this is obvious. In that robot future, why would we have to give a crap what HUMANS thought of goods and services? Things might evolve to suit what the robots and AIs like, in which case human input is about as useful as asking horses about highways. "This sucks, it makes my hooves hurt!" um, it's kinda not meant for you, Dobbin…

seanp2k2 9y ago

Someone also has to design, program, update, coordinate, and negotiate things around the robots. I admit that I haven't built out a map of a person + support services vs a robot, but I don't think it's suddenly an order of magnitude less jobs, it's just that the jobs will be different. There are some societal standards which are hard to change, such as the preference of some to have a human cashier ring them up at the grocery store. I personally prefer the scanner tables, since I can do it quickly and there's typically less of a line, but at e.g. Safeway and Home Depot, half the time they're out of order. Target doesn't always have them and Whole Foods doesn't have them (in ones I've been to). Self-checkouts have been in stores for at least 15 years ( http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/15/business/fi-scanner15 http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/15/business/fi-scanner1... ), yet there aren't replacing many cashiers, and the trend I've noticed lately is away from them. My point is that it's fun to think about, but I think we're many decades away from having to worry about robots replacing a majority of minimum-wage jobs, and it might not even be worth it to automate some of these things until minimum wage is much higher. Another example I can think of is a table busser at a restaurant. It'd be hard to make a robot who could operate as smoothly in tight quarters as a human, not spilling stuff everywhere and making lots of noise. You'd basically need design a restaurant around automation, not the other way 'round. You could also just design a counter-service restaurant where people take their own dishes to a tub, which is a lot less involved than maintaining a fleet of dish bots. Diners might also scoff at (or be amazed by, or both) robots cleaning stuff around them while eating. Industrial robots I've seen aren't very pretty or clean. Do you think that the Knightscope bots clean and wax their own exteriors? At that point, do you pay someone to clean the robots or just have them clean the tables? Or clean the robot with another robot-washing robot. This might work in Star Wars, but even there, Chewie and Han did the wrenching; R2 just helped them diagnose it. Again, my point is that I doubt there will be less stuff to do in the future, just hopefully higher-value stuff. If you look at history and as other commenters have mentioned, e.g. the move from subsistence farming to increasingly more automation, workers go from picking vegetables to other hopefully more desirable jobs (maybe driving a fork lift to load the boxes of produce into trucks).