8 ms·

Serious question. What would you do for work if we did get a robot to do your job?

mabbo 8y ago
What would I need to work? Look, we're rapidly approaching a point where all human needs (food, shelter, etc) can be handled by automation. If we reach that point, why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better?
- yazaddaruvala 8y ago
  Technologically maybe, politically most countries are still very very far away.
- krapp 8y ago
  >If we reach that point, why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better? Because we will likely still be living in capitalist societies in which people increasingly unable to provide value to the marketplace due to automation will still need income to survive, and no one implementing that automation has any intention of doing so in order to usher in some kind of post-scarcity collectivist utopia. Automation exists to allow the ownership class to reap the benefits of labor without the burden of compensating human employees, not to free the labor classes from having to work.
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    Well, I’m a working robotics engineer in the Silicon Valley area and I am trying to design robotics for a post scarcity collectivist utopia. At home I do research in to functional 3D printed robotics and I operate a YouTube channel and discussion website [1] to pull people together so we can discuss collectively owned automated communities. I’m a fan of Murray Bookchin and want to live in a collectively owned automated farming commune. I’ve just taken a new job on an actual farm as a robotics engineer, and we’re going to try to build automation for farming. I’m also a writer and I study the intersection of automation and society. So while it’s true that most automation engineers don’t think this way, some of us do. :-) [1] http://reboot.love http://reboot.love
    - krapp 8y ago
      It's not the engineers I'm talking about so much as business owners, stockholders and politicians, the people actually writing the laws and making the decisions about how automation is going to shape the future. The problem with seeing automation as a means to liberate people from capitalism and free them for intellectual pursuits (a noble and laudable goal) is that it exists to serve capitalist ends. Amazon, for instance, is definitely not automating for the benefit of humanity. They just don't want to pay people. Although it is good to know someone is thinking about it. I really worry that, at scale, mass employment won't be addressed until it actually threatens the status quo.
      - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
        I absolutely agree with you. I don’t think there’s much I can do to stop what’s currently got so much momentum. The capitalists will capitalize and the workers will be treated as tools to be taken on and used when needed to fill in the gaps, and quality of life for many people will continue to be low even as some of us travel to other worlds. But the technology, while not liberating, will become more accessible. And I think a lot of people, just as in many decades past, are interested in something beyond bare capitalism. My hope is that the collectivists can make progress in the coming decades too. We can develop our own open source alternatives to the machinery of dystopia. We can abandon intellectual property as a concept and ensure that when we labor for new development, the knowledge we gain is accessible to everyone who wants to liberate themselves. And just as a group of hobbyists and corporations built Linux, perhaps we could build our own alternative to dystopia. Politically right now I think we need unity and we need to stop trying to use the government to solve our problems. The government is a tool of force and force cannot be the way we build utopia except perhaps as defense against those who would have it shut down. https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA
      - AareyBaba 8y ago
        This might be good point to mention the only 2020 presidential candidate who is talking about how UBI could address this seemingly inevitable future that is closer than we think. Andrew Yang. See his discussion with students at Georgetown Univ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuJ0phjFys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuJ0phjFys or for a longer exposition of his ideas see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8
  - wait_a_minute 8y ago
    This is not necessarily true. See: The washing machine, which gave people an average of ten hours of free-time more each week when it was invented. And countless other inventions that automate away manual labor and are accessible to average people.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      The washing machine and other household appliances only allowed women to reallocate their labor time to the market rather than at home.
      - gdy 8y ago
        Do they?
      - wait_a_minute 8y ago
        That isn't accurate. The electric washing machine was first invented and sold en masse in 1928. It wasn't until seven to eight decades later that women started participating in the labor force more broadly. Until then, and even now, the washing machine contributes a significant amount to extra leisure time. And indeed, Americans have a lot of leisure time. That is how we are able to spend 35 hours a week on average on watching television. (Source: Nielsen report on television consumption)
        philwelch 8y ago
        Seven to eight decades after 1928 is 1998-2008. Female participation in the labor force grew significantly prior to that, though the main impetus was probably the Second World War.
        wait_a_minute 8y ago
        Only 43.3 percent of women worked outside the home in 1970. It'd be some time yet after that before most of them did. The point was that your argument against the washing machine was incorrect. Those 10-15 hours a week were actual gains for the working class. Women didn't jump into the labor force right after that machine was created and sold, after all.
  - otikik 8y ago
    It is in their own interest that the inequality doesn't grow past a certain point. Even an army of robots can do very little against a hungry mob.
    - HALtheWise 8y ago
      Please, let's not ever find out how a hungry mob fares against a emotionless robot army. I don't think it would be pretty.
  - matz1 8y ago
    Right now the robot/automation is not cheap enough/easy enough for individual people to operate it. If these become reality the traditional capitalist societies will change and it won't be necessary for people to provide value to other human to survive.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Capitalism is just an abstraction for the human condition.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  I’ve researched this extensively and I’m convinced we could have done this in the developed world starting 100 years ago, but individuals in a position of power preferred to accumulate wealth themselves rather than distribute earnings equitably. So I don’t believe an automated utopia is going to happen automatically. We’ve got to work to create corporate structures that naturally reward all of the workers instead of a few at the top. Cooperatively run companies are one way to do this. If the major companies of our world were cooperatives, a wide swath of the population would gain the wealth our world is increasingly producing. But technology alone won’t solve the problem. We need to intentionally structure our society in a way that makes this socialist utopia possible. That’s what I study and I’m trying to figure it out. I’m also a robotics engineer.
  - technobabble 8y ago
    > and I’m convinced we could have done this in the developed world starting 100 years ago I'm interested in reading more about this. Do you have books/research papers you recommend?
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      Well, I’ve definitely found Chomsky’s work helpful as a libertarian socialist critique of the state. His book “On Anarchism” helped lay out to me how collectivist movements of the past have often failed by direct violent repression from the state. I’ve not read Karl Marx but I’ve learned from others that his critique of capitalism is worthwhile and relevant today and has been since it was written. At one time I found Richard Wolff helpful, including his book “Democracy at Work” about worker run collectives. His lectures may be of value but lately I find him hard to listen to because of how kind of smarmy he gets. This interview with Murray Bookchin from 1986 was pretty informative: https://youtu.be/kBP_BMOblzc https://youtu.be/kBP_BMOblzc Otherwise the subject of interest is called “anarchism” or “libertarian socialism” or “communism”. It all falls under the broader umbrella of “socialism”, which is the intentional organization of society to produce a certain quality of life for all people. All of those terms have been heavily loaded by history and it’s propaganda, so you have to search carefully. Pundits of all persuasions will make broad claims about these social sciences, but know this: socialism and the other ideas laid out have a rich and complex history that absolutely must be researched. Ignore anyone who says the soviets were socialist and they were horrible so socialism is horrible. There is a history of socialist movements going back over 150 years that includes many writers and activists including those who were murdered by the soviets or the nazis precisely because they wanted power in the hands of the people, not the state. When you look this up, also study imperialism, feminism, the black panthers and black liberation moments, lgbtq movements, and liberation movements in other countries. If you’re white and/or otherwise privileged (as I am) know that the experience of less privileged people are so different from yours that they absolutely cannot be excluded from the development of a utopia. For more information see here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/ https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
- massivecali 8y ago
  Many retired people return to work after retirement out of boredom. Humans need tasks, be it for money or purpose. If we arent trying to attain food or shelter due to automation, what's the point? Not everyone takes well to hobbies. It might be great several generations in the future, but it's going to be a culture shock for those raised on working.
  - dymk 8y ago
    Let's imagine a future where all farming has become fully automated. I'm sure some people will still want to live on farms (although perhaps not the commerical sized ones we've got now), and grow crops, raise chickens, etc. But, they get to do so without the pressure of having to succeed or they starve. Maybe some people actually like that stress and pressure to succeed (lest they starve); takes all kinds.
- jackhack 8y ago
  I appreciate your optimism but I'm skeptical to the extreme that it is achievable. >why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better? Answer: the basic faults inherent in basic human nature that have prevented us from getting along at any point in human history : avarice(greed), lust, sloth, envy, gluttony, etc. General religious intolerance and ethnic hatred, war, prejudice, etc. And that's just among the so-called normal people. Factor in psychopathic behavior and it's not difficult to find an answer. But that only covers behavioral issues. Now factor in contributions from natural disaster, drought, pestilence, pollution, scarcity, etc. and this explains why I don't think we have a chance.
- refurb 8y ago
  What would I need to work? Because humans want more than just basic human needs addressed?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

What would I need to work? Look, we're rapidly approaching a point where all human needs (food, shelter, etc) can be handled by automation. If we reach that point, why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better?

yazaddaruvala 8y ago
Technologically maybe, politically most countries are still very very far away.
krapp 8y ago
>If we reach that point, why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better? Because we will likely still be living in capitalist societies in which people increasingly unable to provide value to the marketplace due to automation will still need income to survive, and no one implementing that automation has any intention of doing so in order to usher in some kind of post-scarcity collectivist utopia. Automation exists to allow the ownership class to reap the benefits of labor without the burden of compensating human employees, not to free the labor classes from having to work.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Well, I’m a working robotics engineer in the Silicon Valley area and I am trying to design robotics for a post scarcity collectivist utopia. At home I do research in to functional 3D printed robotics and I operate a YouTube channel and discussion website [1] to pull people together so we can discuss collectively owned automated communities. I’m a fan of Murray Bookchin and want to live in a collectively owned automated farming commune. I’ve just taken a new job on an actual farm as a robotics engineer, and we’re going to try to build automation for farming. I’m also a writer and I study the intersection of automation and society. So while it’s true that most automation engineers don’t think this way, some of us do. :-) [1] http://reboot.love http://reboot.love
  - krapp 8y ago
    It's not the engineers I'm talking about so much as business owners, stockholders and politicians, the people actually writing the laws and making the decisions about how automation is going to shape the future. The problem with seeing automation as a means to liberate people from capitalism and free them for intellectual pursuits (a noble and laudable goal) is that it exists to serve capitalist ends. Amazon, for instance, is definitely not automating for the benefit of humanity. They just don't want to pay people. Although it is good to know someone is thinking about it. I really worry that, at scale, mass employment won't be addressed until it actually threatens the status quo.
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      I absolutely agree with you. I don’t think there’s much I can do to stop what’s currently got so much momentum. The capitalists will capitalize and the workers will be treated as tools to be taken on and used when needed to fill in the gaps, and quality of life for many people will continue to be low even as some of us travel to other worlds. But the technology, while not liberating, will become more accessible. And I think a lot of people, just as in many decades past, are interested in something beyond bare capitalism. My hope is that the collectivists can make progress in the coming decades too. We can develop our own open source alternatives to the machinery of dystopia. We can abandon intellectual property as a concept and ensure that when we labor for new development, the knowledge we gain is accessible to everyone who wants to liberate themselves. And just as a group of hobbyists and corporations built Linux, perhaps we could build our own alternative to dystopia. Politically right now I think we need unity and we need to stop trying to use the government to solve our problems. The government is a tool of force and force cannot be the way we build utopia except perhaps as defense against those who would have it shut down. https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA
    - AareyBaba 8y ago
      This might be good point to mention the only 2020 presidential candidate who is talking about how UBI could address this seemingly inevitable future that is closer than we think. Andrew Yang. See his discussion with students at Georgetown Univ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuJ0phjFys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuJ0phjFys or for a longer exposition of his ideas see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8
- wait_a_minute 8y ago
  This is not necessarily true. See: The washing machine, which gave people an average of ten hours of free-time more each week when it was invented. And countless other inventions that automate away manual labor and are accessible to average people.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    The washing machine and other household appliances only allowed women to reallocate their labor time to the market rather than at home.
    - gdy 8y ago
      Do they?
    - wait_a_minute 8y ago
      That isn't accurate. The electric washing machine was first invented and sold en masse in 1928. It wasn't until seven to eight decades later that women started participating in the labor force more broadly. Until then, and even now, the washing machine contributes a significant amount to extra leisure time. And indeed, Americans have a lot of leisure time. That is how we are able to spend 35 hours a week on average on watching television. (Source: Nielsen report on television consumption)
      - philwelch 8y ago
        Seven to eight decades after 1928 is 1998-2008. Female participation in the labor force grew significantly prior to that, though the main impetus was probably the Second World War.
        wait_a_minute 8y ago
        Only 43.3 percent of women worked outside the home in 1970. It'd be some time yet after that before most of them did. The point was that your argument against the washing machine was incorrect. Those 10-15 hours a week were actual gains for the working class. Women didn't jump into the labor force right after that machine was created and sold, after all.
- otikik 8y ago
  It is in their own interest that the inequality doesn't grow past a certain point. Even an army of robots can do very little against a hungry mob.
  - HALtheWise 8y ago
    Please, let's not ever find out how a hungry mob fares against a emotionless robot army. I don't think it would be pretty.
- matz1 8y ago
  Right now the robot/automation is not cheap enough/easy enough for individual people to operate it. If these become reality the traditional capitalist societies will change and it won't be necessary for people to provide value to other human to survive.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Capitalism is just an abstraction for the human condition.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I’ve researched this extensively and I’m convinced we could have done this in the developed world starting 100 years ago, but individuals in a position of power preferred to accumulate wealth themselves rather than distribute earnings equitably. So I don’t believe an automated utopia is going to happen automatically. We’ve got to work to create corporate structures that naturally reward all of the workers instead of a few at the top. Cooperatively run companies are one way to do this. If the major companies of our world were cooperatives, a wide swath of the population would gain the wealth our world is increasingly producing. But technology alone won’t solve the problem. We need to intentionally structure our society in a way that makes this socialist utopia possible. That’s what I study and I’m trying to figure it out. I’m also a robotics engineer.
- technobabble 8y ago
  > and I’m convinced we could have done this in the developed world starting 100 years ago I'm interested in reading more about this. Do you have books/research papers you recommend?
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    Well, I’ve definitely found Chomsky’s work helpful as a libertarian socialist critique of the state. His book “On Anarchism” helped lay out to me how collectivist movements of the past have often failed by direct violent repression from the state. I’ve not read Karl Marx but I’ve learned from others that his critique of capitalism is worthwhile and relevant today and has been since it was written. At one time I found Richard Wolff helpful, including his book “Democracy at Work” about worker run collectives. His lectures may be of value but lately I find him hard to listen to because of how kind of smarmy he gets. This interview with Murray Bookchin from 1986 was pretty informative: https://youtu.be/kBP_BMOblzc https://youtu.be/kBP_BMOblzc Otherwise the subject of interest is called “anarchism” or “libertarian socialism” or “communism”. It all falls under the broader umbrella of “socialism”, which is the intentional organization of society to produce a certain quality of life for all people. All of those terms have been heavily loaded by history and it’s propaganda, so you have to search carefully. Pundits of all persuasions will make broad claims about these social sciences, but know this: socialism and the other ideas laid out have a rich and complex history that absolutely must be researched. Ignore anyone who says the soviets were socialist and they were horrible so socialism is horrible. There is a history of socialist movements going back over 150 years that includes many writers and activists including those who were murdered by the soviets or the nazis precisely because they wanted power in the hands of the people, not the state. When you look this up, also study imperialism, feminism, the black panthers and black liberation moments, lgbtq movements, and liberation movements in other countries. If you’re white and/or otherwise privileged (as I am) know that the experience of less privileged people are so different from yours that they absolutely cannot be excluded from the development of a utopia. For more information see here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/ https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
massivecali 8y ago
Many retired people return to work after retirement out of boredom. Humans need tasks, be it for money or purpose. If we arent trying to attain food or shelter due to automation, what's the point? Not everyone takes well to hobbies. It might be great several generations in the future, but it's going to be a culture shock for those raised on working.
- dymk 8y ago
  Let's imagine a future where all farming has become fully automated. I'm sure some people will still want to live on farms (although perhaps not the commerical sized ones we've got now), and grow crops, raise chickens, etc. But, they get to do so without the pressure of having to succeed or they starve. Maybe some people actually like that stress and pressure to succeed (lest they starve); takes all kinds.
jackhack 8y ago
I appreciate your optimism but I'm skeptical to the extreme that it is achievable. >why do people need to have jobs? Why can't we turn our lives towards something better? Answer: the basic faults inherent in basic human nature that have prevented us from getting along at any point in human history : avarice(greed), lust, sloth, envy, gluttony, etc. General religious intolerance and ethnic hatred, war, prejudice, etc. And that's just among the so-called normal people. Factor in psychopathic behavior and it's not difficult to find an answer. But that only covers behavioral issues. Now factor in contributions from natural disaster, drought, pestilence, pollution, scarcity, etc. and this explains why I don't think we have a chance.
refurb 8y ago
What would I need to work? Because humans want more than just basic human needs addressed?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]