We might jokingly call this the first bill against robot rights. To play robot devil's advocate... the future dystopia probably isn't a campaign driven by a fe

We might jokingly call this the first bill against robot rights. To play robot devil's advocate... the future dystopia probably isn't a campaign driven by a fear of AI, but driven by a fear of programming in general, and skepticism towards anyone who is able to automate tasks and do things more efficiently. We all know the early history of the loom that birthed programmable machines, and how the community fought to destroy the machines. People were displaced from jobs, and that drove them in part. But people also get angry when anyone points out to them that there is an easier way to do something they've been doing the hard way. It's a well known psychological phenomenon known as "effort justification." Look at the post from yesterday full of stories of people being able to automate their job. When middle management found out, sometimes there was gratitude, but most often the reaction was fear or anger, firing them for insubordination despite showing how the company could save money. There's an 80s movie where Kevin Bacon is teaching a group of kids how to camp in the mountains. Sean Astin builds a fish trap after no one else can catch fish, comes back with plenty for everyone. Bacon throws the dozen fish away, saying he didn't deserve them and everyone should just go hungry. It's dramatized, but we see that in real life. The idea that someone hired for data entry can have a more measurable impact on the company's bottom line after a week at the company than a manager can who has spent years climbing the rungs can be seen as a personal affront. Why is there this gap in thinking about the world between people who look for clever shortcuts and people who support labor for labor's sake? There's a famous intro to CS lecture that has been reposted here a few times here. In it, the professor talks about the process of computer science as a step beyond algebra, it's about thinking of forumlas of processes. Thinking about processes like variables that can be modified, or as having components and properties. People who have tried programming a while often understand this intuitively, and people who haven't, don't. If you understand that, you can see how trivial it is to replicate simple processes. You can see there's no functional difference between a society that makes these calls using silicon and a society that makes these calls using meat. Mechanical turk is just another black box. It seems obviously strange to make numbers illegal or place export controls on a dozen or so lines of easily memorized code. And it's really hard or impossible to explain these positions to people who don't see the world that way. You may realize all that, but still find yourself upset at these robocalls. If that's the case, ask yourself what you're really upset about. Is it the method of the calls, or is it the calls themselves? Are you better off somehow if you are manually called at exactly the same rate with exactly the same scripts? Banning the method mainly just reserves the technique for people who own a call center. I see no reason to give that class of people additional power over everyone else. I see no reason to scapegoat automation here and tell people it's acceptable to continue to fear programs.