36 ms·
There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most im
by w_for_wumbo 3y ago
There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans.
By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring.
We have a mandate for us and our future generations to learn from the lessons of history and stand together as human beings to ensure that the value that we have created is respected and shared with those who created it.
We don't deserve the scraps that fall to us, we deserve a seat at the damn table.
- mouse_ 3y agoThe people in positions of power are going to treat their fellow humans as poorly as they can get away with. That's how they got their positions of power.
- its_ethan 3y agoI think you'd find that, on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. I'm not sure what hierarchies you've been a part of where people actively trying to treat people poorly leads to their success - I'd wager those are few in far between in reality, and over represented in media. Maybe you're cynical about a few high profile companies or how U.S. politics appears, but positions of power exist everywhere in society, and society wouldn't be even remotely functional if people followed your assumed behavior.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoYou've never heard of sweatshops or labor trafficking?
- Ensorceled 3y agoGoogle "wage theft US" ... I think some people treat people well, but I've met too many small business owners who bristle at paying minimum wage.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoHow much power do such people have? (Clearly not zero, but ...)
- realce 3y agoEnough to keep the minimum wage from growing logically or justly
- JohnFen 3y agoBig businesses, too.
- Ensorceled 3y agoFor sure! But there are sooooo many people who think that the majority of small business owners are good people who take care of their employees like they're family.
- nirvdrum 3y agoI suppose this is all relative. Paying people a paltry wage, cutting their hours so they can't get employer-sponsored healthcare, routinely committing wage theft, forcing minors to be use unsafe equipment, requiring doctor notes for time off from work, denying PTO requests or shifting PTO so it can't be accrued or paid out are all pretty common with some major US corporations. And on top of that they took advantage of raising inflation to jack up prices or reduce product quantities so they could maximize profit. So, yeah, Americans aren't working 16 hour shifts in mines anymore and child labor laws are largely in effect. But, I also wouldn't say most people are treated "quite well." That's not the media force-feeding me stuff. That's first-hand experience and watching what friends and family are going through right now.
- rurp 3y agoLook at how people are treated in places without decent labor laws or other protections. There are hundreds of millions of people right now toiling away in miserable and dangerous conditions. Middle class workers in the US and Europe are the exception, not the norm.
- zlg_codes 3y agoWalk into any office in the United States and you'll find this. There's even a phenomenon associated with it that has a name: The Peter Principle. Within any organization, you will have the sociopaths who want the glitz and title and power but have no respect for those they'll have to knock down to get there. That is what we're talking about.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe Peter Principle is about being incompetent, not sociopathic.
- adolph 3y agoI think maybe you are confusing Gervais with Peter. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- Aunche 3y ago> on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. This is a very important point and the strength of capitalism. Even a self asshole like Elon Musk is incentivized to provide useful goods and services and create jobs that raise people's standard of living.
- supertimor 3y agoI mean, Musk is currently being sued by a bunch of his old employees for not paying them properly, so not sure if he’s the best example here. He also fired like 80% of his workforce at twitter/X so not sure how incentivized he actually is to “create jobs.” And arguably the changes he has made has made his product worse in the process.
- username135 3y agoThat's essentially capitalism. Profit > everything else
- ta8645 3y agoThat's human nature. You won't get a better deal in Russia, China or any theoretical utopian civilization you dream up either. I don't know what the answer is, but it sure as hell isn't blaming everything on capitalism.
- realce 3y agoThat's a PART of human nature, but to equate all of capitalism to all of human nature is a gross costuming.
- zlg_codes 3y agoWhy is it people like yourself simply cannot fathom that one particular economic system could be harmful to humanity? We've managed to take a critical eye at superstition, religion, propaganda, all sorts of things. But the primary means through which inequality is carried out in society? NOOOO, leave that alone. That's perfectly fine where it is. People who align with that are profiting from capitalism.
- ta8645 3y agoWhy is it people like yourself can not learn from history? I'm all for moving in a better healthier direction, i'm not interested in repeating the mistakes of the past. For all its failings, capitalism has done more to improve the lives of every human on this planet more than any other system before. The burden of proof is thus on those who want to destroy it, to prove they have a viable and useful alternative that will ACTUALLY make the lives of people better. Instead, what I see is a direction that is guaranteed to lead to bloodshed and misery, with only a dreamers hope that what comes afterward is any better.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
- mulmen 3y agoThis is a nice sentiment but labor doesn’t create value in a world of robots. We need a radically different system of wealth allocation.
- pydry 3y ago1) We need a radically different one now - one that shifts the burden *off" labor and back on to asset owners - especially land owners (there is literally only an economic upside to taxing them more). 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. 3) if control over the economy were wrested from oligarchs and were put under democratic control, the economy wouldnt be geared towards frittering away billions on trying to deskill, dehumanize and eliminate labor.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoI take issue with point three. Assuming that democratization of private goods is a good thing, we’d want to deskill so to speak. We’d want to pursue automation. I doubt the majority of citizens would want know how to maintain the automation.
- pixl97 3y ago>would want know how to maintain the automation. Ah, I see we're following the foundation timeline.
- tzs 3y ago> 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. Not necessarily. If the manufacturing of robots can be made cheap enough it may be cheaper to replace broken robots with new ones and send the broken ones off to be recycled rather than fix them.
- verdverm 3y agoor robots fixing robots, and all our other things while they are at it
- 3y ago
- gunapologist99 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Equal pay for robots!!
- zlg_codes 3y agoGiven what the "top" of society looks like currently, the Luddites were correct to be skeptical of technology, and accusations of "Luddite" at the slightest hint of not being 100% on board with the latest fad technology make this discussion seem in bad faith. Most techies I know do not have a skeptical eye for technology, even though IMO they should. This shit is being used to spy on and manipulate us with the data they gather. At what point is it okay to say "no"? My view of the culture says techies never say no to new shiny. We need a new era of carefulness in computing, both as programmers and as users. We need to demand better accountability. As long as the leaders we have now are still there tomorrow, I'm afraid this goal will never happen. You need a nation who cares more about its people than its GDP to achieve that, and I posit no nation on Earth has that level of care for its people.
- kevinventullo 3y agoMy view of the culture says techies never say no to new shiny The only people I know who remotely care about things like data privacy and GDPR are techies. I personally will never install a “smart home” device.
- zlg_codes 3y agoYes, one must generally be technically inclined to be one of the careful ones, but as we both know, that brand of techie isn't as common.
- _aavaa_ 3y agoluddites were not skeptical of technology, or even against it. They were against the way in which factory owners used technology to illegally displace them (as workers) and to falsely advertise the resulting textiles (selling low quality goods while claiming they were of higher quality) in order to undercut them and put them out of business.
- chii 3y agoThe customer is responsible for accepting the level of quality of said goods. And it seems overwhelmingly that they (thru their action, rather than words), prefer to have cheaper, lower quality goods as long as it passes some threshold. Therefore, if a machine surpasses this threshold, they will win marketshare.
- rossriley 3y agoPeople bring the value that they generate for an economy. Once they can be replaced with AI/Robots then that labour can be reallocated further up the value chain which in turn makes our economies and culture richer and more productive. Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive, it's ridiculous to argue that eschewing automation for anything is detrimental, it only serves to enhance society and make it more productive.
- peteradio 3y agoBit of a rosy picture though. People aren't reallocated, instead they are fed opioids/various other drugs to death. There are very much winners and losers.
- noduerme 3y agoYou can both be right. An obese, drug addled society is by definition a wealthy one (although it may not be for long).
- Syonyk 3y ago> Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive... Then you definitely shouldn't look at actual reports of time spent, leisure time, etc, in those eras. Because that's nothing at all what life was in the eras you're thinking of. How much of our modern time - work hours - do we spend to maintain the cars we take to work, and the large houses we were convinced to buy "as an investment," etc? Or just our personal tech stacks that always somehow seem to need replacement?
- JohnFen 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Companies already send that clear message even without AI. That's why there's fear here: we expect companies to behave as they always have, and that is with a level of contempt for human workers.
- nico 3y ago> Companies already send that clear message even without AI. Companies are people. You are saying people running those companies are doing that to other people
- andsoitis 3y ago> Companies are people. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. - Aristotle Companies exhibit emergent behavior that might be hard, if at all possible, to predict if you only had a single individual as reference. For instance, most individuals would probably never agree to manufacture a weapon that is specifically requested to kill your neighbor. However, this same individual will show no empathy and remorse for their labor in a company that produces something that is used to commit incredible destruction to the earth, even contributing to the deaths of millions of people.
- selestify 3y ago> For instance, most individuals would probably never agree to manufacture a weapon that is specifically requested to kill your neighbor. Are you talking about gun manufacturing for law enforcement or military purposes? Because those weapons aren’t manufactured to kill one specific person (my neighbor). If somehow the government were to pay me adequately to hand-craft a gun for the police or military, I would have no moral compunctions in doing so. I see no reason for the government to ask me to hand-make an inferior good at such high cost, though.
- chromoblob 3y agoWhich is obviously irrational, so maybe we shouldn't care about such individuals, at least in long term.
- atleastoptimal 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. The thing is we can't help but compare people on the value that they bring. We can't go on about human value being tied to our creativity, emotional sensitivity, or any skill because once AI can do that, that value goes out the window for humans. Humans have to be valuable for no other reason than the fact that they are human, even if they technically are a burden. This is the only mentality that will keep humans safe in the AI apocalypse.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoPerhaps it's time to stop using untyped value as a concept entirely. It has always been unclear--in cases where people's objectives differ--just whose values are used determine what counts as "value". It's a simplification that served us well when the common threat was famine or disease or war, but those threats weigh less on us these days. We're more concerned with mistreatment from each other, so we probably need something that answers "whose values?" instead so that we can be reminded to check if that person's agenda is actually worth persuing. Such a shift might help interrupt dangerous optimizations such as optimizing for GDP at the expense of biosphere stability.
- deevolution 3y agoI think the compensation comes in the form of lower prices, greater availability of the products, a higher standard of living and newly gained freedom for the worker. They can do something else now. The compensation maybe isn't as explicit or obvious as receiving an "automation dividend" check every month. That's what securities are for!
- ethanbond 3y agoIs this a billboard for Capital in the whole Capital vs Labor debate? “Laborers fret not, you’ve been liberated from your job actually, and I sure hope you bought securities!”
- deevolution 3y agowe've all mostly been liberated from back breaking agricultural farm work in developed countries, no? At least in countries that have automated. Don't think you can say the same for countries without automation. We've reaped tremendous benefits that are just totally lost / taken for granted by the luddites.
- ethanbond 3y agoI think some people take it for granted, but your argument is also a good one for being less satisfied with our current state of affairs. Just imagine how many more people would be even more liberated from inhumane work and low living conditions if wealth didn’t accrue quite so severely to the top N%. Not a reason to stop progress IMO but a good reason to question it and try to nudge it in certain directions.
- supertimor 3y agoYes, I’m sure all the artists, writers and knowledge workers are going to be soooo happy to be liberated from their work that they’ve spent a lifetime training for. Automation can be great when used to replace dangerous or back breaking work that is difficult for humans to preform. AI is not really that though.
- danuker 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. I see many problems with this statement: - Is a new robot-only company fairer than firing humans at an old company? - Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed? - Should there be a robot tax? What is a robot? Is my calculator a robot that keeps an arithmeticist out of a job? - Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit? In my view, we should automate as much as we can, because we spend less valuable human time on what is achievable by machine. However, as more and more people fall behind as technology progresses, it might pose a problem, so I think we should institute basic income. I wouldn't bother with regulating the minutia, just tax Laffer-optimally and give out benefits so as not to create perverse incentives. But I am keen to know someone's thoughts to the contrary.
- NoahKAndrews 3y agoI generally agree with you, and I suspect the person you're replying to might as well. The problem they had was with replacing people without compensating them, but you're proposing basic income, which takes care of the compensation part.
- mc32 3y agoBasic income is not the same as being able to seek higher earning potential. People making above the median certainly will not like getting reset to a basic income lifestyle.
- sublinear 3y ago> However, as more and more people fall behind as technology progresses, it might pose a problem, so I think we should institute basic income. Basic income is the most counterproductive idea possible. We should have spent more on education over 100 years ago.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoNobody has ever accused me of supporting UBI, but hardly any idea is more “counterproductive” than “we should have” done something 100 years ago. Or maybe it’s less counterproductive, more irrelevant, if some topic at hand is “what should we do about increasing automation [in the future]?”
- __loam 3y agoThe development of ML to automate this stuff is especially perverse because ML can't function without the prior value created by people like artists and writers.
- Aerroon 3y ago>By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. This just sounds like rent-seeking. People should get paid, because they once upon a time had a job. Now machines do the job better and for cheaper, therefore you deserve to be paid for it? How about the compensation is the improved products or better prices for all of society?
- SoftTalker 3y agoHow much should a person get paid?
- Aerroon 3y agoWhatever people are willing to pay them for the work.
- pixl97 3y agoOk, then what should they get paid for? Lets imagine your future world. Manual labor, right? No, that's done by robots. Arts and music... well, no. Some generative LLM hooked up to the data feeds of all human emotions is cranking more art/music per day then all 10 billion people on the planet can ever consume. Sex, the oldest profession. Na, Cherry (and Ken) 2000 came out a decade ago and has met our more primal needs since then. So, now what do you do with all these masses have have no purpose. Oh, you don't care because you're going to be one of the enlightened few that somehow makes it out of the rat trap? Seems unlikely. Stop demanding a future dystopia.
- Aerroon 3y agoYou're missing the most important type of work: writing glue code. Somebody has to take all these disparate pieces of technology and glue them together to create useful stuff. Programming has an endless list of useful libraries and yet programmers are as much in demand as ever, because it's not easy to glue different libraries together. The same thing is important in every other type of business. You want your AI to do manual labor? You better figure out a way to glue the AI to a robot and make it understand its environment and goals. Want your AI to make music? It might be able to come up with a great composition itself, but you're still going to have to pick out the best one out of the 10,000 you generated. Then you've got to title it, publish it, and spread it around. All of these are things AI could conceivably do, but it will require an enormous amount of work. If there's not enough scale there then that work is not worth it. Ie it's going to be left for humans to do.
- stan3223 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Wasn't this message sent in the 80s and 90s when it was somehow acceptable to offshore manufacturing for increased bottom line devastating economies and people of small/mid size cities.
- kaashif 3y agoAt the same time, China booming has brought hundreds of millions out of crushing poverty. There are obviously positives and negatives, we shouldn't focus on one side.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eru 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Huh, what? When you get a glass of fresh water from your tap, do you send a dollar to the displaced water carriers of yesteryear?
- android521 3y agothere are already plenty of evidence to suggest that we, collectively, don't treat our fellow humans well. There are tens of millions of people who are on survival mode and most of people living in developed countries simply don't care much , including you and me. You absolutely cannot rely on humans to treat each other well. In the AI age, it will mostly benefit those who have capital to employ an army of AIs. It is hard to believe our politicians will do anything drastic but only drastic changes will matter (like universal income or very high tax for wealthy people who no long rely on labors). Dark times ahead.
- lynx23 3y agoAhh, entitlement. I find it somewhat confusing that people seem to treat the AI and robot era as if it were anything new. Workers are being replaced by machines since, what, 50 to 100 years? It is happening in stages, but... I just watched a old TV-series (Büro Büro[1]) from the 80s, and guess what, replacing human workforce with computers was already a topic back then. AI is just the new type of robot, but we have been doing this since decades. It is a bit like with climate change. We are aware that our way of life is not sustainable since roughly 40 to 50 years. In both cases, young people today behave like these problems are new. They aren't. Going back to the job market, automation is a result of technological advancements. Doomsayers like to point out it is taking work away from humans, while optimists focus on a future where nobody has to do anything while still getting money for nothing... Both sides are likely wrong. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCro,_B%C3%BCro https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCro,_B%C3%BCro
- surfingdino 3y ago> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Compensation doesn't fix the problem. As more and more jobs get replaced with AI or robots, the number of ways of earning a living shrinks and people have no money to buy the products and services offered by the AI-poweered industrial complex. It's a problem that the billionaire gods don't want to see. The politicians don't have a clue how to address it either.
- ithkuil 3y agoWell, billionaires may stop being billionaires when nobody can consume their product/services because they can't afford them
- luminouslow 3y ago>the number of ways of earning a living shrinks Is this true? it seems there are new ways cropping up all the time
- surfingdino 3y agoNot everybody is able to constantly keep on reinventing themselves.
- zirgs 3y agoDid anyone care about welders who got replaced, because robots are much better at welding car frames together? Only now when "prestigious" white collar positions are being threatened people are starting to freak out.