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It always makes me scratch my head when people brush off the coming automation revolution by saying "they'll just get other jobs". The point is, eventually, the

It always makes me scratch my head when people brush off the coming automation revolution by saying "they'll just get other jobs". The point is, eventually, there will be no jobs at all. This is going to require a major rethinking of our social structure. Even the process of getting to that point will be slow and cause severe economic and social upheaval. We need to be thinking about this now before we have 10 million rioting in the streets because there are no jobs left.

xsmasher 15y ago
That's the Luddite argument to a T. I mean the historic, literal Luddites, not the modern figurative use. They were hand-weavers, worried that mechanical looms would put them out of business. They were right, and they were subject to severe financial hardship. No force on earth could have stopped the change taking place, though.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  The difference is the pace and the scale. When its not just hand-weavers, but large swaths of society being made obsolete in a matter of years, we can't expect it to play out the same way as in the past.
  - riffraff 15y ago
    isn't this a simplistic view? The industrial revolution was effectively covering the whole society, making a host of jobs obsolete in a matter of years, not only hand weaving. The same happened for the second industrial revolution, or the "green revolution". Why should we expect this time to be different?
    - hackinthebochs 15y ago
      Previous revolutions didn't make people obsolete because it still required human labor to drive the increased production, and because the growth in productive capacity mostly equaled the growth in population and demand. The automation revolution will be different because supply can suddenly outstrip demand by orders of magnitude. Wealth as we currently view it will essentially be limited by availability of natural resources rather than human productive capacity.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    What do you propose? We cannot stop it, nor should we even try to. The best you can do is to be aware of what is happening, and surf the wave rather than get creamed by it. Some people are going to come out poorly, but that is just the nature of the beast that is life. Don't waste calories worrying about them.
    - hackinthebochs 15y ago
      I don't think we should try to stop it. But I think the process of transitioning our society will be extremely painful. We can help mitigate a disaster by planning for it. It begins by first accepting that there will likely be huge social unrest as the process unfolds. As automation takes over, there will be huge segments of society unable to maintain their standard of living. We need to begin to rethink our ideas of ownership of wealth and resources.
      - nextparadigms 15y ago
        I think it's wrong looking at this as a "disaster". There's nothing good about a natural disaster, while history has proven again and again that paradigm shifts, while also having a negative side effect in the short term, have a much larger positive effect in the long term. Take a look in the mobile industry. Is Nokia crumbling down and laying off a lot of people? Is RIM doing the same? Both former leaders in this market. Yes they are, but wouldn't you agree that what has come out of this is much better for everyone? People need to stop looking at "saving jobs" in a time like this. The focus should be on "creating jobs". Let the jobs that need to disappear in order to have progress, disappear. If you're arguing against that, then you're arguing against the very nature of progress and evolution, whether it's biological, economical or technological. For example in a time of "economic crisis", which happens about every 10 years or so, you should let that crisis kill the inefficiencies in the system! And then focus on taking advantage of it to create new businesses that are much more efficient and can deal with the new conditions, and from that you'll also have more jobs.
ximeng 15y ago
People can just sit around going to restaurants, doing art, doing exercise, travelling, sitting in cafes, surfing youtube. Lots of jobs today are of dubious utility, and lots of people with jobs waste a lot of their time surfing the internet and doing other marginally productive work.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  I agree with all that. The point is the current social structure isn't set up for that. We still distribute resources based on how much money you can earn. When there's no money to earn, we need an entirely new framework.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - rkalla 15y ago
    hackin, I've been reading your replies and thought this summed up what you've been saying in other replies. Exactly spot on that the framework for society we have no is not capable of handling/supporting what I'll call the artistic/spiritual re-revolution that may occur after machines take over all (for the purposes of this argument) jobs. That being said we still need to be mining and creating raw resources to make the robots for the automation and the devices, so someone at the top will be holding a giant leash around that process and they will, in reality, have the power to exert whatever reality they decide on down onto all of us if we want our robots, automation and gadgets.
  - ugh 15y ago
    It sort of is, a little bit. No one in Europe has to die without work, they don’t even have to starve. It’s not a pleasant life, certainly, but it shows that a massive change of our social structures wouldn’t be necessary, we would just have to extend what we are currently doing.
hugh3 15y ago
The point isn't that there'll be no jobs, because ten jobs building a hundred widgets an hour can be replaced by ten jobs maintaining a hundred robots that build ten thousand widgets per hour, thus making everybody significantly richer. The real problem is that increasing automation only creates jobs for smart people, while destroying jobs for dumb people. Not everybody capable of building widgets is capable of maintaining a widget-building robot. We're replacing manual labour jobs with jobs that require a brain, but half the population still has below-average intelligence.
- rkalla 15y ago
  Good point, but does it have a conclusion? I think Kurzweil refers to it as the Singularity... but basically what happens when AI reaches the point where it can manage itself or advance itself? This is certainly in the realm of "what if" because we haven't established if sheer compute power CAN get us AI that eventually becomes self-aware. I sort of assume it can, but I don't like to make sweeping statements based on my assumptions. We might find some missing "human" link in the intelligence chain that stops computers and AIs from making that final leap once we get to that precipice.
  - zacharypinter 15y ago
    Here's an interesting article on that: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-singularity-coming/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-singul... "A common misnomer about the Singularity and the idea of greater-than-human AI is that it will involve a conscious, self-reflective, and even morally accountable agent. This has led some people to believe that it will have deep and profound thoughts, quote Satre, and resultantly act in a quasi-human manner. This will not be the case. We are not talking about artificial consciousness or even human-like cognition. Rather, we are talking about super-expert systems that are capable of executing tasks that exceed human capacities. It will stem from a multiplicity of systems that are individually singular in purpose, or at the very least, very limited in terms of functional scope. And in virtually all cases, these systems won’t reflect on the consequences of their actions unless they are programmed to do so."
  - 15y ago
rkalla 15y ago
I very much agree that this point will eventually be reached. We won't suddenly stop automating tasks and making those automations more and more functional. It'll be interesting. I've spoken to people that feel our role will be to move back to an intellectual time of philosophy and cultural advancement while our mechanical counterparts take care of everything else. As a side-note, part of the Animatrix compilation was an anime short by a famous animator that portrayed the future where we have throngs of robot slave labor. Just abusing, destroying, crushing and pushing them harder and harder, throwing them away as they are "injured". It was a perverse vision to be sure and only made more perverse by the need to make the robots human-like and then eventually given them AI (in the anime at least). All of these things will be unexpected challenges. Will you cringe in 2040 when you see a humanoid robot fall from a skyscraper or accidentally have a tractor drive over it while moving something big? These are the strange/unexpected/unprepared scenarios I think will catch us off guard.
timedoctor 15y ago
Not at all. There will be different types of jobs. For example: massage, hair dresser, more beauty salons, personal assistants etc

xsmasher 15y ago

That's the Luddite argument to a T. I mean the historic, literal Luddites, not the modern figurative use. They were hand-weavers, worried that mechanical looms would put them out of business. They were right, and they were subject to severe financial hardship. No force on earth could have stopped the change taking place, though.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
The difference is the pace and the scale. When its not just hand-weavers, but large swaths of society being made obsolete in a matter of years, we can't expect it to play out the same way as in the past.
- riffraff 15y ago
  isn't this a simplistic view? The industrial revolution was effectively covering the whole society, making a host of jobs obsolete in a matter of years, not only hand weaving. The same happened for the second industrial revolution, or the "green revolution". Why should we expect this time to be different?
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    Previous revolutions didn't make people obsolete because it still required human labor to drive the increased production, and because the growth in productive capacity mostly equaled the growth in population and demand. The automation revolution will be different because supply can suddenly outstrip demand by orders of magnitude. Wealth as we currently view it will essentially be limited by availability of natural resources rather than human productive capacity.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  What do you propose? We cannot stop it, nor should we even try to. The best you can do is to be aware of what is happening, and surf the wave rather than get creamed by it. Some people are going to come out poorly, but that is just the nature of the beast that is life. Don't waste calories worrying about them.
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    I don't think we should try to stop it. But I think the process of transitioning our society will be extremely painful. We can help mitigate a disaster by planning for it. It begins by first accepting that there will likely be huge social unrest as the process unfolds. As automation takes over, there will be huge segments of society unable to maintain their standard of living. We need to begin to rethink our ideas of ownership of wealth and resources.
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      I think it's wrong looking at this as a "disaster". There's nothing good about a natural disaster, while history has proven again and again that paradigm shifts, while also having a negative side effect in the short term, have a much larger positive effect in the long term. Take a look in the mobile industry. Is Nokia crumbling down and laying off a lot of people? Is RIM doing the same? Both former leaders in this market. Yes they are, but wouldn't you agree that what has come out of this is much better for everyone? People need to stop looking at "saving jobs" in a time like this. The focus should be on "creating jobs". Let the jobs that need to disappear in order to have progress, disappear. If you're arguing against that, then you're arguing against the very nature of progress and evolution, whether it's biological, economical or technological. For example in a time of "economic crisis", which happens about every 10 years or so, you should let that crisis kill the inefficiencies in the system! And then focus on taking advantage of it to create new businesses that are much more efficient and can deal with the new conditions, and from that you'll also have more jobs.

ximeng 15y ago

People can just sit around going to restaurants, doing art, doing exercise, travelling, sitting in cafes, surfing youtube. Lots of jobs today are of dubious utility, and lots of people with jobs waste a lot of their time surfing the internet and doing other marginally productive work.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
I agree with all that. The point is the current social structure isn't set up for that. We still distribute resources based on how much money you can earn. When there's no money to earn, we need an entirely new framework.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rkalla 15y ago
  hackin, I've been reading your replies and thought this summed up what you've been saying in other replies. Exactly spot on that the framework for society we have no is not capable of handling/supporting what I'll call the artistic/spiritual re-revolution that may occur after machines take over all (for the purposes of this argument) jobs. That being said we still need to be mining and creating raw resources to make the robots for the automation and the devices, so someone at the top will be holding a giant leash around that process and they will, in reality, have the power to exert whatever reality they decide on down onto all of us if we want our robots, automation and gadgets.
- ugh 15y ago
  It sort of is, a little bit. No one in Europe has to die without work, they don’t even have to starve. It’s not a pleasant life, certainly, but it shows that a massive change of our social structures wouldn’t be necessary, we would just have to extend what we are currently doing.

hugh3 15y ago

The point isn't that there'll be no jobs, because ten jobs building a hundred widgets an hour can be replaced by ten jobs maintaining a hundred robots that build ten thousand widgets per hour, thus making everybody significantly richer. The real problem is that increasing automation only creates jobs for smart people, while destroying jobs for dumb people. Not everybody capable of building widgets is capable of maintaining a widget-building robot. We're replacing manual labour jobs with jobs that require a brain, but half the population still has below-average intelligence.

rkalla 15y ago
Good point, but does it have a conclusion? I think Kurzweil refers to it as the Singularity... but basically what happens when AI reaches the point where it can manage itself or advance itself? This is certainly in the realm of "what if" because we haven't established if sheer compute power CAN get us AI that eventually becomes self-aware. I sort of assume it can, but I don't like to make sweeping statements based on my assumptions. We might find some missing "human" link in the intelligence chain that stops computers and AIs from making that final leap once we get to that precipice.
- zacharypinter 15y ago
  Here's an interesting article on that: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-singularity-coming/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-singul... "A common misnomer about the Singularity and the idea of greater-than-human AI is that it will involve a conscious, self-reflective, and even morally accountable agent. This has led some people to believe that it will have deep and profound thoughts, quote Satre, and resultantly act in a quasi-human manner. This will not be the case. We are not talking about artificial consciousness or even human-like cognition. Rather, we are talking about super-expert systems that are capable of executing tasks that exceed human capacities. It will stem from a multiplicity of systems that are individually singular in purpose, or at the very least, very limited in terms of functional scope. And in virtually all cases, these systems won’t reflect on the consequences of their actions unless they are programmed to do so."
- 15y ago

rkalla 15y ago

I very much agree that this point will eventually be reached. We won't suddenly stop automating tasks and making those automations more and more functional. It'll be interesting. I've spoken to people that feel our role will be to move back to an intellectual time of philosophy and cultural advancement while our mechanical counterparts take care of everything else. As a side-note, part of the Animatrix compilation was an anime short by a famous animator that portrayed the future where we have throngs of robot slave labor. Just abusing, destroying, crushing and pushing them harder and harder, throwing them away as they are "injured". It was a perverse vision to be sure and only made more perverse by the need to make the robots human-like and then eventually given them AI (in the anime at least). All of these things will be unexpected challenges. Will you cringe in 2040 when you see a humanoid robot fall from a skyscraper or accidentally have a tractor drive over it while moving something big? These are the strange/unexpected/unprepared scenarios I think will catch us off guard.

timedoctor 15y ago

Not at all. There will be different types of jobs. For example: massage, hair dresser, more beauty salons, personal assistants etc