5 ms·

Because one will be a net benefit to society and the other probably won’t be?

bumby 3y ago
Can you elaborate? Because it's not immediately clear to me the distinction. I'll concede that automating manual labor has made consumer products cheaper. Whether that is wholly a net benefit, I think, is up for debate. When you consider the externalities like the environmental effects of rampant consumerism and the erosion of the middle class via a reduction in manufacturing jobs, I think there's plenty of basis for at least arguing there is tipping point on automating away manual labor. To say automating manual labor bluntly (and without careful consideration of blowback) always leads to a better society, I think one needs to define what they mean as society and what metrics they're using to define "better." I, personally, don't think raw GDP is a good measure of the health of a society. If anything, I think automating knowledge work has as at least a potentially larger upside. The downside will largely be borne by the upper-middle and upper-classes, which is why the GGP can read like a classist perspective.
- rob74 3y ago
  I was referring to automating "jobs" that are not even realistic jobs without automation, because they would be too labor-intensive/unpleasant/low-paying for anyone to want to do them, like the trash-sorting example.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bumby 3y ago
    u/xvector did a good job explaining why this dynamic exists https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828089
    - Philorandroid 3y ago
      They make the cynical case that automation is coming for us all, and it will eventually replace every ounce of fun or meaning in gainful employment, but that it's okay because of some nebulous societal good. It's not a convincing argument.
      - bumby 3y ago
        While I do question their point that AGI is coming for all jobs, I think you're shoehorning your own narrative onto their point. At no point did they mention "fun" or "meaning". Even the idea that those are synonymous with employment is suspect.
        Philorandroid 3y ago
        It's not a narrative so much as a leftover from what I was originally going to post, in that the creative/expressive/stimulating work is what's being touted as the first thing to be eliminated by AI. That aside, what exactly is suspect about finding meaning or joy in work? Is the quintessential experience meant to be soulless and grating?
        jMyles 3y ago
        > Is the quintessential experience meant to be soulless and grating? Of course not. Few things in life are more fulfilling than a job you absolutely love and are excited to whack at every single day. But your question raises another one of equal stature: Is the quintessential experience meant to be a job? If we are creative enough to make rocks that can learn to do our jobs for us, surely we are creative enough to craft an economic model which allows us who no longer need to work to paint or write poetry or rebuild antique engines without needing to starve?
        Philorandroid 3y ago
        I don't think a _job_ is the quintessential experience so much as _productive value,_ doing something that brings you joy from the act of creating, whether it's making music or art, assembling Lego kits, antique engine restoration, etc. Getting that satisfaction from your job is totally possible, so perhaps to some people it is! As far as crafting a post-scarcity economic model goes, it's not the problem of dreaming one up, it's the pervasiveness of scarcity. Even if all of humanity's basic necessities are one day a given, scarcity won't disappear, just shift around (maybe as transportation for the otherwise-infinite supply of consumer goods? Or living space away from dense urban centers? Maybe even the kind of heuristic analysis abilities humans are unmatched in to keep the matter replicators functioning?) More to the point, saying that this kind of luxury will exist in a thousand years doesn't nullify the concerns of the present, and probably wouldn't convince most people to forfeit their employment to machines likely owned by the uppermost classes.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Any job that is necessary can have higher pay. Agriculture is probably one of those things that are necessary, unless we all eat fish. Higher wages in agriculture would mean a combination of less profit and/or higher consumer prices. That is not a sin. It is mostly politicd that demand that food prices have to be low so that the population don't realize how poor they are and much they are being robbed on corruption and waste.
- Kalium 3y ago
  Automating knowledge work is what enables people to learn from books instead of hiring tutors. Teaching can now be done via tools and printing presses. This in turn means we can have libraries, which many people consider a key public good. It's perhaps worth pausing to consider if we have any kind of useful ability to predict blowback on anything but a trivial scale. It was fifteen years between the invention of HTTP and the creation of Facebook. It was twenty five years between the invention of HTTP and the Cambridge Analytica breach. I do not think any person could have meaningfully predicted those on those timescales. If we cannot currently usefully predict blowback, then what reason is there to try to anticipate it as a matter of policy?
  - bumby 3y ago
    I don't think I fully agree with the premise that blowback is completely unpredictable. I think there are plenty of examples where people can predict the directionality of future developments, even if they can't predict the exact specifics. We can certainly predict that when automation happens people will lose jobs. In a country where productivity is king and self-worth is tied to employment, we can predict this may lead to a crisis in society. And we also know people tend to turn to vices like drugs during those times. So I don't think things like the opioid epidemic that hit the former manufacturing centers of the country are unrelated nor completely unpredictable. They just sometimes take decades to play out. I'm not making a Luddite case that technology needs to be stalled. But I'm also not making the techno-optimist case that everything will eventually work out if we just plow forward with reckless technological abandon. The latter runs the risk of a lot of increased human suffering in the short term at the very least.
    - Kalium 3y ago
      To clarify, I am not saying blowback is completely unpredictable. You are absolutely right that there are times when blowback can be predicted in a general sense. My argument is that a general directionality of blowback is generally not useful for crafting policy. You're completely right that it was easy to predict that there would be some consequences to automation and people losing their jobs. Yet I do not think it was easy to predict what shape those would take. As a result, it was functionally impossible to offer useful policy measures. You can say "We should reform society away from believing productivity is king and self-worth is tied to employment", but that's itself not specific enough to be useful. "This may lead to a crisis in society" is similarly rather non-specific. How do you craft policy around "this may lead to a crisis"? In practice, I see two recurring patterns when people try to predict blowback. First, people use fears of blowback to launder their anxieties. If you look at the conversation around AI, you will see this happening in many forms. Second, people often use predictions about blowback to advance policies they wanted anyway. Artists want to be hired more and stronger intellectual property laws, the same things they wanted yesterday. Advocates for saving small towns in the rust belt will suggest the same retaining and social safety net policies they suggested yesterday before anyone asked them to predict blowback. In my opinion, these two patterns are deeply linked. They are both about trying to turn confirmation bias into policy. None of the answers from this are automatically wrong, but none of them are novel. Most worryingly, neither approach offers any kind of way to reliably predict blowback so it can be dealt with via policy. In my career, I've seen any number of engineering teams devote significant time and effort to trying to solve technical problems that never arose. Not because they were solved in advance, but because the team's predictions about where issues would arise were wildly incorrect. From this, I have drawn the lesson that we are well-advised to approach the task of trying to predict failure in complex systems with deep humility. The more complex the system, the more humble we need to be. At some point, trying to make any prediction more specific than "something will probably go wrong" becomes a poor use of time. This is neither the Luddite case nor the techno-optimist case. It's an argument to be skeptical of our own ability to make good predictions about the future except in, as you wisely and correctly say, very general ways.
- unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
  >Can you elaborate? Because it's not immediately clear to me the distinction. Replacing a task with AI that otherwise will be done chemically with environmental degradation or not done at all because people won't or can't-- AI in that context makes things better. As for attempts to deploy AI as a replacement for sophisticated human work like "automating knowledge work", the output will be worse and it's a race to the bottom on quality. As we see from our algorithmic-driven tech industry friends, robot-led workstreams benefit society only in the short run. In the long run, people come to miss-- and their lives are diminished by-- an absence of quality, humanity, agency, caring, fairness, all the things algorithms cannot and will not ever be or do. Anyone who is serious about this topic only discusses in terms of AI + humans (as a combination) and not AI as a replacement for sophisticated work. Statements beyond that reflect a lack of appreciation for either the complexity of the topic or for what society actually expects out of a "knowledge" workstream.
  - bumby 3y ago
    I would consider myself in the AI+humans camp. However, I do not see the distinction between automating knowledge work and manual work in what you describe. Somehow, knowledge workers seem to think what they do has some magic special sauce. I tend to think this is the result of human bias and not clear, first-principled thinking. You make a bold claim that automating knowledge work will be worse but don't show any data to confirm it. Even trivial cases can disprove it, however. Do you think knowledge work is worse when it is "automated" using an Excel spreadsheet vs a pencil and paper? >an absence of quality, humanity, agency, caring, fairness, all the things algorithms cannot and will not ever be or do. I would argue that automation can be quite better than humans on many of these domains. When they do fall short, it's often because they are reflecting (and in worse cases, amplifying) the shortcomings of humans in these same areas.

Can you elaborate? Because it's not immediately clear to me the distinction. I'll concede that automating manual labor has made consumer products cheaper. Whether that is wholly a net benefit, I think, is up for debate. When you consider the externalities like the environmental effects of rampant consumerism and the erosion of the middle class via a reduction in manufacturing jobs, I think there's plenty of basis for at least arguing there is tipping point on automating away manual labor. To say automating manual labor bluntly (and without careful consideration of blowback) always leads to a better society, I think one needs to define what they mean as society and what metrics they're using to define "better." I, personally, don't think raw GDP is a good measure of the health of a society. If anything, I think automating knowledge work has as at least a potentially larger upside. The downside will largely be borne by the upper-middle and upper-classes, which is why the GGP can read like a classist perspective.

rob74 3y ago
I was referring to automating "jobs" that are not even realistic jobs without automation, because they would be too labor-intensive/unpleasant/low-paying for anyone to want to do them, like the trash-sorting example.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bumby 3y ago
  u/xvector did a good job explaining why this dynamic exists https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828089
  - Philorandroid 3y ago
    They make the cynical case that automation is coming for us all, and it will eventually replace every ounce of fun or meaning in gainful employment, but that it's okay because of some nebulous societal good. It's not a convincing argument.
    - bumby 3y ago
      While I do question their point that AGI is coming for all jobs, I think you're shoehorning your own narrative onto their point. At no point did they mention "fun" or "meaning". Even the idea that those are synonymous with employment is suspect.
      - Philorandroid 3y ago
        It's not a narrative so much as a leftover from what I was originally going to post, in that the creative/expressive/stimulating work is what's being touted as the first thing to be eliminated by AI. That aside, what exactly is suspect about finding meaning or joy in work? Is the quintessential experience meant to be soulless and grating?
        jMyles 3y ago
        > Is the quintessential experience meant to be soulless and grating? Of course not. Few things in life are more fulfilling than a job you absolutely love and are excited to whack at every single day. But your question raises another one of equal stature: Is the quintessential experience meant to be a job? If we are creative enough to make rocks that can learn to do our jobs for us, surely we are creative enough to craft an economic model which allows us who no longer need to work to paint or write poetry or rebuild antique engines without needing to starve?
        Philorandroid 3y ago
        I don't think a _job_ is the quintessential experience so much as _productive value,_ doing something that brings you joy from the act of creating, whether it's making music or art, assembling Lego kits, antique engine restoration, etc. Getting that satisfaction from your job is totally possible, so perhaps to some people it is! As far as crafting a post-scarcity economic model goes, it's not the problem of dreaming one up, it's the pervasiveness of scarcity. Even if all of humanity's basic necessities are one day a given, scarcity won't disappear, just shift around (maybe as transportation for the otherwise-infinite supply of consumer goods? Or living space away from dense urban centers? Maybe even the kind of heuristic analysis abilities humans are unmatched in to keep the matter replicators functioning?) More to the point, saying that this kind of luxury will exist in a thousand years doesn't nullify the concerns of the present, and probably wouldn't convince most people to forfeit their employment to machines likely owned by the uppermost classes.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Any job that is necessary can have higher pay. Agriculture is probably one of those things that are necessary, unless we all eat fish. Higher wages in agriculture would mean a combination of less profit and/or higher consumer prices. That is not a sin. It is mostly politicd that demand that food prices have to be low so that the population don't realize how poor they are and much they are being robbed on corruption and waste.
Kalium 3y ago
Automating knowledge work is what enables people to learn from books instead of hiring tutors. Teaching can now be done via tools and printing presses. This in turn means we can have libraries, which many people consider a key public good. It's perhaps worth pausing to consider if we have any kind of useful ability to predict blowback on anything but a trivial scale. It was fifteen years between the invention of HTTP and the creation of Facebook. It was twenty five years between the invention of HTTP and the Cambridge Analytica breach. I do not think any person could have meaningfully predicted those on those timescales. If we cannot currently usefully predict blowback, then what reason is there to try to anticipate it as a matter of policy?
- bumby 3y ago
  I don't think I fully agree with the premise that blowback is completely unpredictable. I think there are plenty of examples where people can predict the directionality of future developments, even if they can't predict the exact specifics. We can certainly predict that when automation happens people will lose jobs. In a country where productivity is king and self-worth is tied to employment, we can predict this may lead to a crisis in society. And we also know people tend to turn to vices like drugs during those times. So I don't think things like the opioid epidemic that hit the former manufacturing centers of the country are unrelated nor completely unpredictable. They just sometimes take decades to play out. I'm not making a Luddite case that technology needs to be stalled. But I'm also not making the techno-optimist case that everything will eventually work out if we just plow forward with reckless technological abandon. The latter runs the risk of a lot of increased human suffering in the short term at the very least.
  - Kalium 3y ago
    To clarify, I am not saying blowback is completely unpredictable. You are absolutely right that there are times when blowback can be predicted in a general sense. My argument is that a general directionality of blowback is generally not useful for crafting policy. You're completely right that it was easy to predict that there would be some consequences to automation and people losing their jobs. Yet I do not think it was easy to predict what shape those would take. As a result, it was functionally impossible to offer useful policy measures. You can say "We should reform society away from believing productivity is king and self-worth is tied to employment", but that's itself not specific enough to be useful. "This may lead to a crisis in society" is similarly rather non-specific. How do you craft policy around "this may lead to a crisis"? In practice, I see two recurring patterns when people try to predict blowback. First, people use fears of blowback to launder their anxieties. If you look at the conversation around AI, you will see this happening in many forms. Second, people often use predictions about blowback to advance policies they wanted anyway. Artists want to be hired more and stronger intellectual property laws, the same things they wanted yesterday. Advocates for saving small towns in the rust belt will suggest the same retaining and social safety net policies they suggested yesterday before anyone asked them to predict blowback. In my opinion, these two patterns are deeply linked. They are both about trying to turn confirmation bias into policy. None of the answers from this are automatically wrong, but none of them are novel. Most worryingly, neither approach offers any kind of way to reliably predict blowback so it can be dealt with via policy. In my career, I've seen any number of engineering teams devote significant time and effort to trying to solve technical problems that never arose. Not because they were solved in advance, but because the team's predictions about where issues would arise were wildly incorrect. From this, I have drawn the lesson that we are well-advised to approach the task of trying to predict failure in complex systems with deep humility. The more complex the system, the more humble we need to be. At some point, trying to make any prediction more specific than "something will probably go wrong" becomes a poor use of time. This is neither the Luddite case nor the techno-optimist case. It's an argument to be skeptical of our own ability to make good predictions about the future except in, as you wisely and correctly say, very general ways.
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
>Can you elaborate? Because it's not immediately clear to me the distinction. Replacing a task with AI that otherwise will be done chemically with environmental degradation or not done at all because people won't or can't-- AI in that context makes things better. As for attempts to deploy AI as a replacement for sophisticated human work like "automating knowledge work", the output will be worse and it's a race to the bottom on quality. As we see from our algorithmic-driven tech industry friends, robot-led workstreams benefit society only in the short run. In the long run, people come to miss-- and their lives are diminished by-- an absence of quality, humanity, agency, caring, fairness, all the things algorithms cannot and will not ever be or do. Anyone who is serious about this topic only discusses in terms of AI + humans (as a combination) and not AI as a replacement for sophisticated work. Statements beyond that reflect a lack of appreciation for either the complexity of the topic or for what society actually expects out of a "knowledge" workstream.
- bumby 3y ago
  I would consider myself in the AI+humans camp. However, I do not see the distinction between automating knowledge work and manual work in what you describe. Somehow, knowledge workers seem to think what they do has some magic special sauce. I tend to think this is the result of human bias and not clear, first-principled thinking. You make a bold claim that automating knowledge work will be worse but don't show any data to confirm it. Even trivial cases can disprove it, however. Do you think knowledge work is worse when it is "automated" using an Excel spreadsheet vs a pencil and paper? >an absence of quality, humanity, agency, caring, fairness, all the things algorithms cannot and will not ever be or do. I would argue that automation can be quite better than humans on many of these domains. When they do fall short, it's often because they are reflecting (and in worse cases, amplifying) the shortcomings of humans in these same areas.