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1) and 2) seem to be largely effects of a globalized eceonomy, with outsourcing and resulting inequality. Automation seems to be truly a boogie monster you can

1) and 2) seem to be largely effects of a globalized eceonomy, with outsourcing and resulting inequality. Automation seems to be truly a boogie monster you can put blame on. Trains also took away long distance horse buggie jobs. They were largely automated too. And finally, if you think driverless cars are nearby, then so are completely humanoid robots who can do all the work a human can do.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Funny you mention horses, as it is a common analogy in these discourses. The horse population actually declined as they became less necessary thanks to transportation innovations. CGP Grey explained this well: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212 https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212
- adventured 8y ago
  It's the exact same thing that is going to occur with the human population. The current popular calculations for global population growth and the reduction of that growth, are wildly wrong. The reduction in growth and eventual decline is going to happen sooner and will be far more aggressive. The horses were replaced, the humans will be replaced.
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  >The horse population actually declined No shit. There's fewer typewriters these days too.
- rohit2412 8y ago
  Everyone in the world used to be a farmer. Now, only 1% of the population in developed countries farm. This time it's different? Actually, I can agree that there had been reduction in global jobs as world gets slowly automated. But there won't be a sudden takeover of all jobs by some super sentient AI leading to mass unemployment. And neither are the current problems of inequality, debt, low wages a result of an increasing productivity, but rather increasing globalization.
sp527 8y ago
> Automation seems to be truly a boogie monster you can put blame on. This is just blatant ignorance. Anyone remotely conversant in technology understands that the impending wave of automation bc of AI (not AGI or deep-whatever; just improving what we’ve already got) and robotics is going to make the world look very different than in previous technological epochs. This is not Luddite fallacy. There is no limit to the intelligence that can be exhibited by machines and they continue to improve at a nonlinear pace. Meanwhile humans are not. There is a red zone that will be crossed into at some point that will disenfranchise the vast majority of human beings. Personally, I think we already crossed it, and it’s just things like poor BLS reporting standards and jobs programs that are masking the carnage.
- sremani 8y ago
  Here is a true beauty that people should read.. https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960-1030-036.aspx https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960... John F Kennedy talking about how automation is going to change America in 1960.
  - sp527 8y ago
    What I really want to read about is why otherwise intelligent people lazily default to pattern matching when changing facts suggest they should change their mind.
- rohit2412 8y ago
  And I think the red zone is a century away. We have no understanding of how our brains work, yet alone making devices as smart as we are in causal reasoning.
  - sp527 8y ago
    That's the misconception. AGI is very unlikely to happen in our lifetimes due to prohibitive physical limits. But you don't need AGI to disenfranchise more or less 90+% of humans. I find smarter people tend to broadly overestimate human potential. We are unreliable, tire, are often untrustworthy, make mistakes, are subject to emotions, prone to illogic and irrationality, etc. We're a very suboptimal entropy-reducing machine relative to the forms of purpose-built AI and robotics that will be possible within the next 20 years. It's a shame people aren't more alarmed about this.
mdorazio 8y ago
I'm confused. What's the difference between outsourcing and automation in your mind? They are both driven by a desire to lower costs. Automation isn't yet "there" in terms of being able to implement a model/robot/system as effectively or cheaply as sending it to a lower labor cost country, but that's a temporary state of affairs. As soon as automating things is cheaper than paying low-cost labor, companies opt for automation. We've already seen this happen with manufacturing "coming back" to or staying in the US, when what actually comes back is highly automated factories with few blue collar jobs [1]. You seem to be arguing that the issues I brought up are tied only to globalization and outsourcing when they are, in fact, tied to underlying economics that strongly favors automation in the long run. Over the next 10-20 years as automation becomes cheaper and more practical, it makes sense that the same problems will accelerate, even as globalization and outsourcing decline. [1] https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs-automation/ https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs...
- rohit2412 8y ago
  Outsourcing means a country losing jobs to another country. Loss in one country, but not inevitable. It is just fair market competition. Automation is global reduction of available jobs, which we might be doing (with agricultural mechanization mostly). But nowhere are we close to a mass change in society worldwide, not due to AI, and specially not to be given the blame of rising inequality, wages, debt, and unemployment.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago

Funny you mention horses, as it is a common analogy in these discourses. The horse population actually declined as they became less necessary thanks to transportation innovations. CGP Grey explained this well: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212 https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212

adventured 8y ago
It's the exact same thing that is going to occur with the human population. The current popular calculations for global population growth and the reduction of that growth, are wildly wrong. The reduction in growth and eventual decline is going to happen sooner and will be far more aggressive. The horses were replaced, the humans will be replaced.
crdoconnor 8y ago
>The horse population actually declined No shit. There's fewer typewriters these days too.
rohit2412 8y ago
Everyone in the world used to be a farmer. Now, only 1% of the population in developed countries farm. This time it's different? Actually, I can agree that there had been reduction in global jobs as world gets slowly automated. But there won't be a sudden takeover of all jobs by some super sentient AI leading to mass unemployment. And neither are the current problems of inequality, debt, low wages a result of an increasing productivity, but rather increasing globalization.

sp527 8y ago

> Automation seems to be truly a boogie monster you can put blame on. This is just blatant ignorance. Anyone remotely conversant in technology understands that the impending wave of automation bc of AI (not AGI or deep-whatever; just improving what we’ve already got) and robotics is going to make the world look very different than in previous technological epochs. This is not Luddite fallacy. There is no limit to the intelligence that can be exhibited by machines and they continue to improve at a nonlinear pace. Meanwhile humans are not. There is a red zone that will be crossed into at some point that will disenfranchise the vast majority of human beings. Personally, I think we already crossed it, and it’s just things like poor BLS reporting standards and jobs programs that are masking the carnage.

sremani 8y ago
Here is a true beauty that people should read.. https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960-1030-036.aspx https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960... John F Kennedy talking about how automation is going to change America in 1960.
- sp527 8y ago
  What I really want to read about is why otherwise intelligent people lazily default to pattern matching when changing facts suggest they should change their mind.
rohit2412 8y ago
And I think the red zone is a century away. We have no understanding of how our brains work, yet alone making devices as smart as we are in causal reasoning.
- sp527 8y ago
  That's the misconception. AGI is very unlikely to happen in our lifetimes due to prohibitive physical limits. But you don't need AGI to disenfranchise more or less 90+% of humans. I find smarter people tend to broadly overestimate human potential. We are unreliable, tire, are often untrustworthy, make mistakes, are subject to emotions, prone to illogic and irrationality, etc. We're a very suboptimal entropy-reducing machine relative to the forms of purpose-built AI and robotics that will be possible within the next 20 years. It's a shame people aren't more alarmed about this.

mdorazio 8y ago

I'm confused. What's the difference between outsourcing and automation in your mind? They are both driven by a desire to lower costs. Automation isn't yet "there" in terms of being able to implement a model/robot/system as effectively or cheaply as sending it to a lower labor cost country, but that's a temporary state of affairs. As soon as automating things is cheaper than paying low-cost labor, companies opt for automation. We've already seen this happen with manufacturing "coming back" to or staying in the US, when what actually comes back is highly automated factories with few blue collar jobs [1]. You seem to be arguing that the issues I brought up are tied only to globalization and outsourcing when they are, in fact, tied to underlying economics that strongly favors automation in the long run. Over the next 10-20 years as automation becomes cheaper and more practical, it makes sense that the same problems will accelerate, even as globalization and outsourcing decline. [1] https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs-automation/ https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs...

rohit2412 8y ago
Outsourcing means a country losing jobs to another country. Loss in one country, but not inevitable. It is just fair market competition. Automation is global reduction of available jobs, which we might be doing (with agricultural mechanization mostly). But nowhere are we close to a mass change in society worldwide, not due to AI, and specially not to be given the blame of rising inequality, wages, debt, and unemployment.