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> “Wow, so it’s like taking somebody’s job?” Espinoza asked. I don't understand why some people propose this as inherently a bad thing. A robot taking a job me

• dvh 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
• musage 9y ago
  It's not inherently bad, but the way our world is going, it usually is. > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking
• citilife 9y ago
  I think part of it, is for a time (perhaps generations), we may have less jobs for the masses. Most people aren't able to "cure cancer" (is anyone). This can create turmoil and scare people: "I've done this for years, now what?" I'd argue people in Walmart stocking shelves shouldn't have expected their job(s) to be around indefinitely - but hey, some people don't think ahead.
  • Sileni 9y ago
    It's not that they don't, it's that they're quite literally less capable of doing so[0]. Bootstraps indeed. [0] : https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration-poverty-reduces-brainpower-needed-navigating-other-areas-life https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration...
  • chrischen 9y ago
    Cancer is an extreme example. Most people are capable of doing more complex tasks that robots can't do. And frankly, if someone exists who is no better than a robot, should they even be existing (and if they should, should they be forced to do such menial labor when we have the technology and ability to free them from such non-essential work)?
• rungcc 9y ago
  > A robot taking a job means that a human can be freed to do other things... Yeah, like being unemployed.
  • chrischen 9y ago
    Are you suggesting we create a set of menial jobs for the sole purpose of keeping the less capable busy because we're too lazy to put people to good use? Having useless people around doing useless jobs doesn't get rid of the primary issue that there are useless people that exist. People are creative. They can always fill jobs that can't be automated yet since humans are extremely pliable and trainable. Artificially impeding progress to engineer a class of people doing jobs that are completely unnecessary is the type of social engineering only the rich and privileged could possibly dream up.
    • Jemmeh 9y ago
      I am ALL for technical advancements. I LOVE that cashier work can be automated so no one has to do that boring job. But we also have to realize the economy is going to have to change to keep up with automation. With the industrial revolution we got a lot of physical jobs taken away, and we were okay because there was still mental work to do. But more and more of that mental work is being taken over by computers too. Where do humans fit in when there's no physical labor and only very little mental labor with the way the economy is currently set up? Eventually there will be barely any human work left. We have to move to a post-scarcity style economy at some point if you want people to not be upset. That's where things like universal basic income or at least lower-hours work weeks come into play.
• xattt 9y ago
  A person working a menial inventory job at Walmart is unlikely to be at a point in their life where they might also be doing medical research.
  • dictum 9y ago
    Conversely, even the low-level AI projects/systems currently deployed for stuff like ad targeting would fare better at finding cures for cancer.
    • nerpderp83 9y ago
      Which is ironic, no?
  • jryle80 9y ago
    That person may however learn to become caregiver, healthcare worker, or another society supporting worker. As automation and AI take bigger roles, couple with the population aging, we the human being need more and more support from other human fellows, and those professions become more important.
  • chrischen 9y ago
    Well if robots don't take those jobs, then the future generation may think it's OK to take such a menial job instead of studying hard and becoming a cancer researcher. At least Uber drivers are aware of the fact that they may lose their jobs to automation, doesn't mean we should artificially impede automation to keep Uber drivers driving.
    • lawlessone 9y ago
      > then the future generation may think it's OK to take such a menial job Can't recall anyone thinking it's ok, people take jobs so they can pay to survive.
• locopati 9y ago
  And what should the people whose jobs were stocking shelves move on to? They need to eat. They need a roof over their heads. They're not going to be curing cancer. Take everything from someone and give them no options is not only unkind it's unwise.
• VikingCoder 9y ago
  We don't have Universal Basic Income. We don't have Progressive Taxation. We don't have free food, housing, clothing, education. We don't have single payer healthcare. People need jobs to survive in this country. They aren't "freed" to do other things, not in this country. And yes, you're right, this isn't new. But if you look at the amount of debt we are all in - education and housing in particular - those are very symptomatic that people are living beyond their means. And the educational debt is indicative that people at least believe they need to be in that much debt to find a reasonable job. Hooray that unemployment is so low right now. But will it stay there? The FED is increasing interest rates. What will happen next? Hopefully just more cycles, and not something new. It's entertaining watching economists state as law that people will always find work, just because it's always happened before. It's fine at making predictions with statistical confidence, but that's poor consolation when your prediction fails at something so incredibly important.
  • jdminhbg 9y ago
    > We don't have Progressive Taxation. This is just plainly false.
    • Ancalagon 9y ago
      With the new tax plan in place, we really don't have much of a progressive tax for the wealthiest in the nation.
    • VikingCoder 9y ago
      Please look in to the Warren Buffett Rule. Look into the tax rate on Capital Gains. If after looking into those, you're still convinced we have Progressive Taxation, then I'll hear you out. But convincing me that Warren Buffett pays a HIGHER portion of his income as federal taxes than his secretary is going to be pretty dang hard, frankly.
  • chrischen 9y ago
    So instead of getting those things which you are saying we need, you're proposing we artificially impede progress? I'm sure that cancer patient is ecstatic that we're focusing on keeping people doing unnecessary jobs rather than progressing with technology... If you can argue that a robot that makes a certain manual human work obsolete is not good for society, then you may as well argue against all technology that reduces unnecessary manual work in order to create more jobs for the less capable. The whole point of technology is to reduce the amount of work we need to do so that we can do more complicated things. If you're artificially impeding such progress in order to create useless busy work for people, then you're avoiding the main issue: we have too many useless people. However in my opinion people aren't useless and can always be repurposed for higher order tasks that robots or AI cannot master yet.
• 0xJRS 9y ago
  Yeah, homeless people have more time than anyone to do what they like.
• elicash 9y ago
  > I don't understand why some people propose this as inherently a bad thing I can explain this! It's actually simple. People are afraid of unemployment and what it could mean for themselves and their families. So while there are possibly benefits, it's also possible that they will not be able to provide for their family and that's incredibly scary to people.
• LinuxBender 9y ago
  There is a video called Humans Need Not Apply [1] that explains the risk around mass unemployment and validates some of the concerns. In this case, simply replacing a few tedious and error prone tasks probably won't get us to 45% unemployment. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
• pesmhey 9y ago
  The type of worker who is being displaced by a scanning robot isn't normally the type of person who is going to be "curing cancer". This is more of a socioeconomic thing rather than any sort of innate ability to have the training/skillset, or even be in the right place at the right time to have a breakthrough. You say that a human can be freed from having to work when a robot takes their job, but the motivation to work is still there - people need to eat, take care of kids, obligations, etc. Employment is a means to an end. It's almost impossibly hard to describe the different realities that people from different social networks/classes inhabit - I mean, completely alien realities to each other. Deborah Espinoza is worried about robots taking people's ability to earn bread, and the response is "Let them eat cake".
• ggg9990 9y ago
  Uncomfortable ideas that might be true: * a person may be happier working 8 hours for $100 than getting a $100 handout * some n% of people may be better suited for repetitive work than creative work, and when these people are automated out of a job there will not be other repetitive jobs to go to * in the above proposition, n may be closer to 100% than we know * working in a hot and dangerous steel mill for $100 of wages may be preferable, in the long term, to washing floors for a rich person for $120 * the above proposition may be doubly or triply true for men * the above proposition may be additionally doubly or triply true for the subset of men most disposed towards violent conflict resolution * ethnically diverse societies may be at higher risk for societal breakdown than ethnically homogeneous societies * some jobs may be better than others at providing a person with a sense of identity and dignity, and this metric may not correlate with automatibility * some persons with anti-social tendencies may be “tamed” by the requirements of employment and may be less anti-social out of work hours * jobs may take time and energy away from self- and society-destructive behaviors — someone who has just done a long shift may be simply too tired to “raise hell” * individual choices with respect to work may not be utility maximizing for the society OR the individual over the long term — someone may say “yes” to the idea of collecting their wage without ever having to work again, but after 30 years of Netflix may be a less happy person for having done it