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100% Unemployment: on keeping busy when the robots take over (2013)
- yamrzou 2y agoPrevious discussion (Feb 2015, 90 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9065490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9065490
- prasoonds 2y agoReally illuminating. Reading the comments, I can't help but think how bad most of us are at predicting the future. While the OP's world might still be somewhat far away, it doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched now as it would have seemed in 2013.
- dinkblam 2y agohumanity being out-of-work is the premise of Marx's writings and we are not closer to it now than those 170 years ago.
- rbanffy 2y agoI really can’t wait. I have so many side projects I need to finish and my day job keeps interfering with them.
- netdevphoenix 2y agoIt's okay. Your robot will finish them for you so you can focus on your soul destroying CRUD app at work :)
- rbanffy 2y agoIt's not that my day job isn't interesting. It's just that it takes too much time. I love helping other engineers build cool stuff and teaching them how to better wield Python.
- danhds 2y agoI worry that day jobs are useful far beyond money for side projects. You do what you don't want all day, but then you are able to feel happy enough to do great work when you go back home to do what you really want.
- rbanffy 2y agoI actually enjoy my day job. It's just that it's a large part of my day and I feel that I my other interests (restoring old computers, exploring them and how people worked with them, mostly) end up being neglected.
- Kye 2y agoRelevant Ray Bradbury story (Don’t Get Technatal): https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ray-bradbury/short-fiction/text/dont-get-technatal https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ray-bradbury/short-fiction... Written in the 1930s about the far future world of 1975.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoOr Judge Dredd's futsies.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y agoTime flies. I suppose the difference between now and 2013 are LLMs, which did seem to trigger renewed interest in robotics and related branches of knowledge. That said, if history is any indicator, it will not go well.
- nxm 2y agoPlease elaborate
- DoctorDabadedoo 2y agoRobotics is hard and robotics companies fold as fast as flies die on a hot summer day.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y agoI am not suggesting it is easy. I am saying, it is a lot more likely now than 10 years ago.
- DoctorDabadedoo 2y agoI believe some problems in the field are now easier, we haven't made a dent on the truly hard ones, IMO. source: I work in the field.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y agoI am not in the field, but I am trying to branch out a little so it helps to talk with someone who is. LLMs probably help the same way they help with other stuff. They lower the barrier of entry for newcomers ( good and bad at the same time ). That said, what are the current hard problems? I don't want to derail the thread, but this is of personal interest.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y agoNone of what I am about to write is groundbreaking or new thought. More likely than not, it already has been discussed from various perspectives usually when people are accused of being luddites or a question of impact of automation on society comes along. Industrial revolutions ( as there were several including few not listed in the first wiki entry like green revolution [2] or whatever computer revolution ended up being called)[1] at this core did a lot of things, but in just about every instance the major leap came with a social upheavals[3] even if, eventually, new normal was found. Not surprisingly, related major changes in living conditions also spawned new attempts at governing humans ( socialism and its offspring ). All this simple background to say the following, those industrial revolutions changed only a facet of the existing social structure. 100% unemployment would likely implode existing social order. The tension resulting from it would quickly become uncontrollable unless quickly channeled, negated, or absorbed.. As you can likely tell, I am pretty pessimistic about our future as a species. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [3]https://schoolshistory.org.uk/topics/british-history/industrial-revolution/protests-riots-conspiracies-industrial-age/ https://schoolshistory.org.uk/topics/british-history/industr...
- whatever1 2y agoThe machines will have owners; likely, these owners will be very few due to the concentration of wealth that they will have accumulated by the time we reach full automation. So, probably a guy will own all the agricultural automation, another one the warehouse automation, another one the software, etc. Then there will also be the resource owners (probably states or big landlords). Since resources are finite (land, minerals), the automation owners will need to pay for these. Among these folks, there will be an exchange of money. So, for the rest of us, if we don’t own some resource, the outlook does not seem very bright. Maybe prostitution to the owners will be the only available job.
- master-lincoln 2y agoOr we just rob the resource owners and burn the automation.
- harperlee 2y agoOr tax their capital with income redistribution purposes, as we are already doing with more down to earth means of production.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago>Or tax their capital You'd have to abolish tax heavens and loopholes first.
- krior 2y agoWorks well until the security sector gets automated.
- gpderetta 2y agothat's how you get terminators.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
- bsenftner 2y agoI think this line of reasoning is premature. The drive to mass automate is delusional. The complexity of that undertaking is barely grasped, and the tech to enable it may be visible on the horizon, but what we are working with today is not that technology. The AI today is "Atari graphics" and, yeah, sure, we can see the photo realistic fully automated civilization in this capability, but there is a gargantuan series of unsolved and nobody wants to touch them human political and human maturity issues that will stall and derail all of this thinking. The tech is on the horizon, but the human race's ability to meet it is not, we've got growing up to do.
- ssssvd 2y agoHow many 100s of billions had been invested into Atari Graphics? What administrations supported Atari Graphics as a nation-wide top-level project? The key difference in AI is the combined investment of industry champions AND nations states on mind-boggling scale. That can cut the adoption from 40 years to 10. Today's graduates would hardly be able to pay their edu debts by then.
- bsenftner 2y agoYou've missed my point: it is not a financing issue that will prevent mass automation, it is not a technology issue that will prevent mass automation, it is a social politics issue that will derail the entire goal. It's pretty hard to automate while a war is taking place, and if this tech is used to create mass unemployment that will trigger war.
- apples_oranges 2y agoOn a related note, I AM losing a bit of the joy of programming, because I let LLMs generate increasingly greater amounts of it. Who knew that previously writing boilerplate code secretly has made me happier..
- yodsanklai 2y agoMaybe the key is to write more complex projects that you normally would. Recently, I wanted to learn a new language. I tried to pick some simple projects to start with (e.g. write a compression algorithm, a basic 3D renderer, a lambda calculus interpreter and so on). I realized that LLM could do the work for me and lost my motivation. But maybe, I could try to write something much harder and use the LLM to help me.
- scandox 2y agoWith Folded Hands (1947) by Jack Williamson is my favourite vision of such a future I've ever read. From the Dad losing his job to the kids giving up violin because they can't compete with their Humanoid "servants" it captures the sense of futility very well. I think history can be read as a history of human obsolescence. Even the powerful people who thought their values and ideas were important thrown on the scrap heap eventually like everyone else. Luck is living a whole life without experiencing it personally.
- Oarch 2y agoMy favourite is Player Piano by Vonnegut. I find it absurd how prescient it is for a novel that came out in 1952.
- leovingi 2y ago>kids giving up violin because they can't compete with their Humanoid "servants" It's an interesting situation to consider in a fictional story, except we already have real-world proof of this NOT happening the way some authors envision it. We already have machines that can beat master players at Chess and it hasn't led to people giving up on chess - not playing it, not learning it.
- scandox 2y agoI agree the original idea is an over-simplification. But the feeling it captures when you do find yourself obsolete in some way is accurate.
- kmacleod 2y agoVoyage from Yesteryear (1982), James P. Hogan is my favorite. Essentially, yes, the robots can do better once shown but people create because it's enjoyable and, where desired, robots produce copies or maintain. The robots in this case have also been instructed to encourage human leadership and stay out of the way of it.
- yodsanklai 2y ago> 100% Unemployment This is a prediction that has been made for a long time but has never been realized. Also with the end of abundant energy, our descendants may have to work much harder than us.
- DaveMcMartin 2y agoI also have this pessimism. That's why I'm pivoting to hardware and embedded programming.
- kelahcim 2y agoI, sharing the same feeling, have taken more drastic step. Instead of changing a specialisation within IT I have recently graduated in Psychology.
- yamrzou 2y agoInteresting! Would you mind sharing more about your story?
- kelahcim 2y agoNo, I don't mind. Psychology was always on my radar and few years back I have decided to pursue Masters in that field. This opens lots of new possibilities: practice (after additional studies), ability to conduct tests and evaluate people based on results (you need to be a Psychologist in order to use some of the tools), you can apply knowledge into other fields (e.g. HR / team management / event IT), eventually this kind of studies gives a completely new perspective. In my opinion, it was worth the time and effort.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI think psychology and prostitution will probably be the final careers. Most people care about a human being in the loop for both sex and counseling.
- kelahcim 2y agoWell, that's one of the reasons I decided to go with psychology. Counselling suits me more.
- jokoon 2y agoIf AI can barely replace car drivers or truck drivers, I think developers will unfortunately have to keep writing code. Of course AI made progress in the language realm with chatGPT, but I don't see any advance in the realm of consciousness, general AI, emotions, etc. There was some recent, small progress where the brain of a fly was mapped. But I don't see transverse research made between cognition, psychology, neuroscience and AI, which is terrible. Science doesn't even have any relevant insight on a good definition of intelligence that could be transposed into an algorithm. There is also quantum biology, that argues that many biological systems use quantum mechanics. Maybe quantum computing will offer new horizons with additional computing power but it will maybe take 20 more years.
- gpderetta 2y agoWe have little reason to believe that intellectual jobs are harder to automate than physical jobs. Consider the Moravec's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox).
- snakeyjake 2y agoIt depends. Many "intellectual" jobs build things that have never existed before and I have never seen an automation for something that has never existed before. I have also not yet seen a model create something new that was not already contained within the dataset it was trained on. An astronaut on a horse is only superficially original and does not count as "new". Of course, I am not omniscient so that may have already occurred but there is so much bullshittery in the "AI" (it's not I) space that any claim that it has occurred should be quarantined into the "likely a lie" zone of of one's brain until there is overwhelming evidence in the amount needed to convince an astronaut who has been in orbit and gazed upon the Earth that the planet is flat.
- Lichtso 2y ago> Maybe quantum computing will offer new horizons with additional computing power When somebody starts talking about quantum computing outside cryptography I immediately know that they have no idea what they are talking about. That is because they think quantum computing is a faster general purpose computer, which it definitely is not. Instead it has its own complexity classes [0] and most of the problems we care about in general purpose computing seem to not be in there. This to me strongly suggests that biological brains would not gain any advantage by using quantum computing and are thus very unlikely to do so. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_complexity_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_complexity_theory
- felipesabino 2y agoInteresting that two complete opposite views are in the first page today. The other one being "AI isn't going to kill the software industry" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175
- samiv 2y agoThe robots as most people might expect will not take over. The robots will be the software that will slowly start to replace knowledge workers or anyone who works with a computer. If you conduct your work on a computer someone is already planning to replace you with software. Think about that for a second. Incidentally also the knowledge workers are typically the higher income classes in a society. When their jobs start getting cut across the board where will they go? Releasing workers that used to work with computers in offices with no replacement jobs has only one direction and that is to re-train as a skilled worker such carpenter, plumber etc. (Nothing wrong with those jobs), but all that motion and extra surplus of blue collar workers is going to drive down the wages. Also who will be able to pay these workers a living wage? Bezos and Musk and the few other winners of this game called "capitalism"? In this world the humans will become the "robots" at low cost and will essentially be replaceable and only exist to serve those few with still wealth to go around. I honestly believe in the future we really need to rethink the whole structure of the society (basic income) or else the economy is going to displace a lot of people to the fringes of the society working 3-jobs and living out of a car. (Or just downright slums/streets). And when that happens to enough people and there's a critical mass of people with "nothing to lose" revolutions will start. The late Marshall Brain had written a short story "Manna" that is very prescient and outlines a few possible alternative futures for the man kind. Unfortunately personally I'm not very optimistic about a "good" outcome.
- ipdashc 2y ago> short story "Manna" that is very prescient and outlines a few possible alternative futures for the man kind. Unfortunately personally I'm not very optimistic about a "good" outcome. Yeah, it's a good story and pretty thought-provoking, but it's kind of hilarious how quickly the quality nosedives once it switches to the "good" scenario. IMO you can tell he believed in the "bad" one a lot more and it feels like the good one was just shoehorned in to supply an optimistic option. Which is a bit scary...
- blagie 2y agoWe seem to have no mechanisms to "rethink." Market dynamics + personal ambitions are driving change. At the same time, we have no means of popular revolution. Drones are automating war, and LLMs can monitor literally all conversations. Bottom-up revolution is futile. To the contrary, it's likely whomever produces the best drones could pull of a corporate revolution. Market dynamics here centralize power and lead to a natural monopoly. That's perhaps better than competition, since competition pushes for moving fast, which means safety goes by the wayside. Carpenters and plumbers will be obsoleted by robots too. Robot AI is maybe 5-10 years behind LLMs. OpenAI was supposed to be the driving force behind fixing this, but it sold out, and is now building Skynet instead of preventing it.
- htjatg 2y agoMany here say that a political revolution will follow. That is possible, but the oligarchs could equip a foreign legion with no cultural affinity towards the population. Or those that plunder Tolkien for their company names will succeed in their Skynet endeavors. Anduril currently seems like a joke, hopefully it stays that way. On the other hand, the satellite network required for coordinating Skynet is already operational.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoAnduril just secured like 8 billion in funding for their giant manufacturing campus. And Palmer seems perfectly capable. Hopefully we can collectively ban robots for anything regarding policing, though we unfortunately do already use them on humans in SWAT circumstances.
- jslakro 2y agoArticles cited in the writing: New Yorker: https://archive.ph/J3Kex https://archive.ph/J3Kex Wired: https://archive.ph/pNqag https://archive.ph/pNqag
- Kon-Peki 2y agoUltimately, all wealth is derived from the consumption of the teeming masses. There is no point to owning a warehouse if no goods flow through it. There is no point to owning vast tracts of farmland if the food it produces is not purchased and eaten. An empty office building has negative value. Etc. UBI is an interesting idea to deal with such a situation, but is guaranteed to fail because there is enormous incentive for the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. So what will happen? Massive wealth destruction, unevenly distributed. What will that cause? The wealthy to go to war against each other. Your one and only job is to figure out how to avoid becoming collateral damage. If you make it through to the other side (if anyone makes it through to the other side), your existence will be more highly valued than it is now.
- pragmatic 2y agoBit surprised no one has mentioned human evolution/machine hybridization. Cyberpunk style.