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This article is talking about analytics. Analytics will have a marginal impact at best on reducing poverty. Of course people working in analytics have been bene

This article is talking about analytics. Analytics will have a marginal impact at best on reducing poverty. Of course people working in analytics have been benefited by it through the income it has given them, but the cumulative effects of analyzing data will not lead to some epiphany that will help us to end poverty. In order to bring about structural change of the scale needed to end poverty, we need to reach levels of technology, productivity and social organization that we have not yet reached today. We will not ascend to this level by analyzing some set of socio-economic data. We will reach this point by building machines that can do work for us and automating entire supply chains so that labor no longer impacts production costs.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nightski 9y ago
Do you know of any resources that explore this potential in depth (books, articles, etc..)? I'd be very curious. It's one thing to just say "building machines that can do the work for us" but what are all of the implications of this? Will the machines self maintain? Will they build themselves? How would we avoid needing massive teams of people to maintain all of this technology? How would power management and costs work? Even if it is semi-fiction I'd love to read others thoughts on the subject.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  The future I and many others envision is one in which that's all taken care of by machines. From power generation to maintenance, etc. I believe we have yet to fully appreciate the ability of a developed economy to produce jobs and work for people to do. Even if we automate the entirety of the food production, mining and energy generation industries, new forms of work will spring up to absorb anyone that may have been displaced by automation. Whenever some work is automated, people insert themselves on top of that layer of production to form a new layer. This process continues ad infinitum. At least that's been the case for the entire history of organized human society.
  - Razengan 9y ago
    We should really review the idea that everyone should “work.” If machines are doing everything, and I’m not taking resources away from anyone else, why should I work?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - otempomores 9y ago
      Because protestant work ethics declared reality evil?
  - nightski 9y ago
    I understand what the future you and others envision is (it comes up on HN all the time). What I was asking is if you have any references to someone who has actually thought very deeply about this to see if it is even feasible. It's easy to just say machines will take care of everything. That is a long stretch from it actually happening and I think there are many fundamental problems you'd encounter trying to achieve that. Just looking for books, novels, whatever that might explore the idea a lot further.
knieveltech 9y ago
We already have sufficient technology, agricultural & manufacturing output, and logistics in place to feed, clothe, and assumably shelter every human on the planet. Social organization away from surplus value hoarding by big capital seems to be the key missing piece of the puzzle.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  I agree that novel social partnerships will need to develop, but I still think large increases in productivity and technical capability are necessary. For example, the total amount of wealth in the world is about 250 trillion USD according to Credit Suisse. There are about 7.5 billion people in the world today. 250T/7.5B = 33,333 USD per person. This really isn't that much wealth per person. So the total amount in existence still needs to increase dramatically.
  - knieveltech 9y ago
    Given we've either already destroyed or are in the process of destroying every major marine fishery on the planet and something like 40% of the total dry land area on the planet is currently used for some form of agriculture it seems pretty plain that we cannot sustainably support the current global population. You sure that massive increases in global wealth and not a reduction in global population are what are called for?
    - paganel 9y ago
      > Given we've either already destroyed or are in the process of destroying every major marine fishery on the planet Partially related to this, but my parents live in a village on the Lower Danube (the second largest river in Europe, after the Volga). I remember that when I was a kid (in the '80s) you had no problems catching enough fish during a day in order to feed a family of 3 or 4 if you wanted, and even sell something on the side for some extra cash (not much, but it mattered). I remember my uncle telling me that back when he was a kid (the '70s) the fish resources were even more plentiful, as in whenever the river was flooding the marshland-like areas he and his friends would go in there and catch the fish using their bare hands. Nowadays you can barely catch a fish. Some former colleagues of mine spent an entire day trying to catch something in the Danube and at the end they hadn't catch anything (bare in mind, they were using more modern tools compared to what people were using back in the '70s and '80s). The struggle is real.
sorrymate 9y ago
Analytics plays an important role in decision making and understanding. And in fact the cumulative effects of analyzing data has lead to greater efficiency in countless areas of manufacturing[1], better healthcare/patient outcomes[2], and evidence based policy making[3]. Higher levels of technologies, productivity and organization don't just happen by reaching and thinking really hard. Smart people are looking at the data and doing analytics to see how they can improve their processes. Analytics are corner stone to better technology, productivity, and systems. And sure, you can make the argument that charts and graphs themselves will not end poverty. But your missing the point. You should be asking what arguments you can make with those charts. They are often made to help you make a decision. Like everything, finding small improvements will help us understand what is working and what isn't. And with that information we can build better systems with the goal of reducing poverty. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/manufacturing-analytics-unleashes-productivity-and-profitability https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-i... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2659/ [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/panel-calls-for-better-use-of-confidential-data-in-policymaking/?utm_term=.be34d75177ad https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/...
dqpb 9y ago
The point of analytics is to create knowledge. So you're saying either that you don't think analytics produces knowledge, or "Knowledge will have a marginal impact at best on reducing poverty".
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Not all knowledge is useful or productive. If I decide I'm going to count every single hair on my scalp, I've produced data, I've done analytics on my scalp, but the knowledge I've created is not useful. It's clear that analytics creates knowledge, but from what I've seen that knowledge isn't always helpful. It really must be judged on a case by case basis, but analytics often just confirms what we've already known or suspected. We already know that mental illness is responsible for homelessness. The utility of additional analytics here is probably marginal. What is needed are treatments and cures for mental illness itself.
  - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
    Bingo. It’s like the “nudging” trend that’s been floated around in political circles. While it offers measurable improvements from existing processes, it is in effect a tacit admission that our societies are structured poorly and we have neither the collective will nor the imagination to reinvent our ways of life.
mtkd 9y ago
Everything I see around AI/ML is nothing but bad news for entire strata of current vocations. Once the algos get fully optimised to point of diminishing returns - data scientists etc. will become just another unemployment stat too.
- madenine 9y ago
  Every time I see an article talking about how we're going to destroy the economy by turning fast food workers into kiosks and replacing teamsters with self-driving trucks... I just think how much easier it is to replace the average white-collar worker. Accountants, corporate lawyers, clerks, receptionists, schedulers... so many jobs that will either be eliminated or made so that 1 person can do the work of 20, leading to outsourcing and consolidation. 'First they came for the accountants, but I did not speak out because they were paying me really well to design weak AI to replace the accountants...'
  - mtkd 9y ago
    I've lost the link, but I read a thread recently with doctors laughing at the idea they could ever be replaced with anything related to AI. The 1 in 20 left - is so clearly going to happen to that profession - I suspect they'll be hit harder than truck drivers. Once you get every symptom, every generic fingerprint, every prescription and every outcome for a decade in to a TensorFlow model - it's going to smash current results. It won't be guessing at 100mg or 200mg, it will be prescribing 127mg/day for first week, and 122mg/day for the second - a year later it will bring that advice down to 126.
    - myaso 9y ago
      This is an utter fantasy. Small scale limited scope tools being rolled out to augment diagnosis -- Yes. AI doctors -- No :( Also the data is probably mostly shit -- physicians are fallible and like all people potentially incompetent or negligent -- these trends would be reflected in whatever historical data is used, that inefficiency would simply be made much faster with automation -- which is why they will try it first in India before it is ever approved on Western soil. On the other hand a RL system that pokes and prods a living persons brain with electrified needles and uses a conv net to watch for feedback from the resulting facial expressions is completely possible -- with enough training experience anybody could convince me of anything using it. One 30 second session to ensure a lifetime of compliance and happiness -- the promotional material can have a guy drinking a glass Kool-Aid with a look of tranquil bliss on his face.
titzer 9y ago
> In order to bring about structural change of the scale needed to end poverty, we need to reach levels of technology, productivity and social organization that we have not yet reached today. They been sayin' this since the wheel, methinks! Jesus said, "The poor will always be with you." Not being a Christian, I still see the wisdom in this statement. In wealth-oriented societies, rich people have been fighting a war to get rid of poor people since the beginning of time--throw them in jail, lock them in ghettos, deport them, wall them out. The structural change needed is in people's attitudes, society's values, not our technology. It's getting worse, not better, and the more hopes we pin on our techno-fantasy, the harder the crash is going to be.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  But you're leaving out the fact that the average person is much better off now, materially, than they ever were in the past.
  - titzer 9y ago
    The average person might be a little better off than a decade ago, but the gap between rich and poor keeps getting wider, and even worse, the poor are actually getting poorer. If the rich get even richer, the average keeps going up, well done!
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  >In wealth-oriented societies, rich people have been fighting a war to get rid of poor people since the beginning of time Would only quibble in that it's not getting rid of them that's the general goal, but leveraging them for their own benefit (which in some cases might involve the former).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nightski 9y ago

Do you know of any resources that explore this potential in depth (books, articles, etc..)? I'd be very curious. It's one thing to just say "building machines that can do the work for us" but what are all of the implications of this? Will the machines self maintain? Will they build themselves? How would we avoid needing massive teams of people to maintain all of this technology? How would power management and costs work? Even if it is semi-fiction I'd love to read others thoughts on the subject.

meri_dian 9y ago
The future I and many others envision is one in which that's all taken care of by machines. From power generation to maintenance, etc. I believe we have yet to fully appreciate the ability of a developed economy to produce jobs and work for people to do. Even if we automate the entirety of the food production, mining and energy generation industries, new forms of work will spring up to absorb anyone that may have been displaced by automation. Whenever some work is automated, people insert themselves on top of that layer of production to form a new layer. This process continues ad infinitum. At least that's been the case for the entire history of organized human society.
- Razengan 9y ago
  We should really review the idea that everyone should “work.” If machines are doing everything, and I’m not taking resources away from anyone else, why should I work?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - otempomores 9y ago
    Because protestant work ethics declared reality evil?
- nightski 9y ago
  I understand what the future you and others envision is (it comes up on HN all the time). What I was asking is if you have any references to someone who has actually thought very deeply about this to see if it is even feasible. It's easy to just say machines will take care of everything. That is a long stretch from it actually happening and I think there are many fundamental problems you'd encounter trying to achieve that. Just looking for books, novels, whatever that might explore the idea a lot further.

knieveltech 9y ago

We already have sufficient technology, agricultural & manufacturing output, and logistics in place to feed, clothe, and assumably shelter every human on the planet. Social organization away from surplus value hoarding by big capital seems to be the key missing piece of the puzzle.

meri_dian 9y ago
I agree that novel social partnerships will need to develop, but I still think large increases in productivity and technical capability are necessary. For example, the total amount of wealth in the world is about 250 trillion USD according to Credit Suisse. There are about 7.5 billion people in the world today. 250T/7.5B = 33,333 USD per person. This really isn't that much wealth per person. So the total amount in existence still needs to increase dramatically.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  Given we've either already destroyed or are in the process of destroying every major marine fishery on the planet and something like 40% of the total dry land area on the planet is currently used for some form of agriculture it seems pretty plain that we cannot sustainably support the current global population. You sure that massive increases in global wealth and not a reduction in global population are what are called for?
  - paganel 9y ago
    > Given we've either already destroyed or are in the process of destroying every major marine fishery on the planet Partially related to this, but my parents live in a village on the Lower Danube (the second largest river in Europe, after the Volga). I remember that when I was a kid (in the '80s) you had no problems catching enough fish during a day in order to feed a family of 3 or 4 if you wanted, and even sell something on the side for some extra cash (not much, but it mattered). I remember my uncle telling me that back when he was a kid (the '70s) the fish resources were even more plentiful, as in whenever the river was flooding the marshland-like areas he and his friends would go in there and catch the fish using their bare hands. Nowadays you can barely catch a fish. Some former colleagues of mine spent an entire day trying to catch something in the Danube and at the end they hadn't catch anything (bare in mind, they were using more modern tools compared to what people were using back in the '70s and '80s). The struggle is real.

sorrymate 9y ago

Analytics plays an important role in decision making and understanding. And in fact the cumulative effects of analyzing data has lead to greater efficiency in countless areas of manufacturing[1], better healthcare/patient outcomes[2], and evidence based policy making[3]. Higher levels of technologies, productivity and organization don't just happen by reaching and thinking really hard. Smart people are looking at the data and doing analytics to see how they can improve their processes. Analytics are corner stone to better technology, productivity, and systems. And sure, you can make the argument that charts and graphs themselves will not end poverty. But your missing the point. You should be asking what arguments you can make with those charts. They are often made to help you make a decision. Like everything, finding small improvements will help us understand what is working and what isn't. And with that information we can build better systems with the goal of reducing poverty. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/manufacturing-analytics-unleashes-productivity-and-profitability https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-i... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2659/ [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/panel-calls-for-better-use-of-confidential-data-in-policymaking/?utm_term=.be34d75177ad https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/...

dqpb 9y ago

The point of analytics is to create knowledge. So you're saying either that you don't think analytics produces knowledge, or "Knowledge will have a marginal impact at best on reducing poverty".

meri_dian 9y ago
Not all knowledge is useful or productive. If I decide I'm going to count every single hair on my scalp, I've produced data, I've done analytics on my scalp, but the knowledge I've created is not useful. It's clear that analytics creates knowledge, but from what I've seen that knowledge isn't always helpful. It really must be judged on a case by case basis, but analytics often just confirms what we've already known or suspected. We already know that mental illness is responsible for homelessness. The utility of additional analytics here is probably marginal. What is needed are treatments and cures for mental illness itself.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
  Bingo. It’s like the “nudging” trend that’s been floated around in political circles. While it offers measurable improvements from existing processes, it is in effect a tacit admission that our societies are structured poorly and we have neither the collective will nor the imagination to reinvent our ways of life.

mtkd 9y ago

Everything I see around AI/ML is nothing but bad news for entire strata of current vocations. Once the algos get fully optimised to point of diminishing returns - data scientists etc. will become just another unemployment stat too.

madenine 9y ago
Every time I see an article talking about how we're going to destroy the economy by turning fast food workers into kiosks and replacing teamsters with self-driving trucks... I just think how much easier it is to replace the average white-collar worker. Accountants, corporate lawyers, clerks, receptionists, schedulers... so many jobs that will either be eliminated or made so that 1 person can do the work of 20, leading to outsourcing and consolidation. 'First they came for the accountants, but I did not speak out because they were paying me really well to design weak AI to replace the accountants...'
- mtkd 9y ago
  I've lost the link, but I read a thread recently with doctors laughing at the idea they could ever be replaced with anything related to AI. The 1 in 20 left - is so clearly going to happen to that profession - I suspect they'll be hit harder than truck drivers. Once you get every symptom, every generic fingerprint, every prescription and every outcome for a decade in to a TensorFlow model - it's going to smash current results. It won't be guessing at 100mg or 200mg, it will be prescribing 127mg/day for first week, and 122mg/day for the second - a year later it will bring that advice down to 126.
  - myaso 9y ago
    This is an utter fantasy. Small scale limited scope tools being rolled out to augment diagnosis -- Yes. AI doctors -- No :( Also the data is probably mostly shit -- physicians are fallible and like all people potentially incompetent or negligent -- these trends would be reflected in whatever historical data is used, that inefficiency would simply be made much faster with automation -- which is why they will try it first in India before it is ever approved on Western soil. On the other hand a RL system that pokes and prods a living persons brain with electrified needles and uses a conv net to watch for feedback from the resulting facial expressions is completely possible -- with enough training experience anybody could convince me of anything using it. One 30 second session to ensure a lifetime of compliance and happiness -- the promotional material can have a guy drinking a glass Kool-Aid with a look of tranquil bliss on his face.

titzer 9y ago

> In order to bring about structural change of the scale needed to end poverty, we need to reach levels of technology, productivity and social organization that we have not yet reached today. They been sayin' this since the wheel, methinks! Jesus said, "The poor will always be with you." Not being a Christian, I still see the wisdom in this statement. In wealth-oriented societies, rich people have been fighting a war to get rid of poor people since the beginning of time--throw them in jail, lock them in ghettos, deport them, wall them out. The structural change needed is in people's attitudes, society's values, not our technology. It's getting worse, not better, and the more hopes we pin on our techno-fantasy, the harder the crash is going to be.

meri_dian 9y ago
But you're leaving out the fact that the average person is much better off now, materially, than they ever were in the past.
- titzer 9y ago
  The average person might be a little better off than a decade ago, but the gap between rich and poor keeps getting wider, and even worse, the poor are actually getting poorer. If the rich get even richer, the average keeps going up, well done!
unclebucknasty 9y ago
>In wealth-oriented societies, rich people have been fighting a war to get rid of poor people since the beginning of time Would only quibble in that it's not getting rid of them that's the general goal, but leveraging them for their own benefit (which in some cases might involve the former).