6 ms·

When Robots Take All the Work, What'll Be Left for Us to Do?

19 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

yogthos 12y ago
It simply blows my mind that automation of work can be seen as a negative. The problem isn't in the fact that the work is being automated it's with the fact that we structure our society around work. The simple answer is that without work we could do things that we enjoy doing.
- brianbarker 12y ago
  Star Trek society. That's what can happen, but only if we progress into a mindset that those who don't work for money are not slackers nor taking away from the success of the wealthy.
  - MichaelApproved 12y ago
    We wouldn't need to progress into that society, there are many people who already feel that way. Those people could just branch off. My point isn't to nitpick but to point out that it's closer than you might think.
    - brianbarker 12y ago
      Well, there are some people who think this way. Likely there are many of them on HN. However, watch any presidential race in the US and see the rant about people who mooch off society by not "working hard enough." I come from a red state and that's what I hear around here all the time--terms like "welfare state," "freeloaders," etc. and beyond. I do appreciate the hope that more and more people are coming around! That's all we can hope for.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    Until we reach a post scarcity economy, the only way those who don't work can survive is by taking away from those who do work.
- shorodei 12y ago
  There's a gradient from a "work for food" world to "hunger-free" world. Until that transition is complete, people whose work is lost to automation lose their food.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    That has not been the case historically. So far, when automation has removed jobs, better jobs have been added to the economy in the process. Among the poor in automation heavy economies obesity is a more common problem than starvation.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I don't think people see automation per se as a negative. Rather, they are skeptical of our ability to restructure our society, and fear the social impact of automation in that context. I mean, what happens when AI replaces programmers? When a designer can "write a program" just by telling a computer in natural language what he wants to do? Not only will most of HN be out of work, but many of our hobbies will be irrelevant. Who will read a blog post about Rust making it easier to write correct concurrent software when some AI is going to handle that much better than a human ever could?
  - yogthos 12y ago
    Sure, but the focus should be on how to restructure society as opposed to bemoan automation. It's worth noting that automation of jobs has been going on for a long time now, and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them.
    - zokier 12y ago
      > and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them. there are what, 7 billion people on earth. there is probably somebody who would want to go back to society of manual labor.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      I think there is a real difference between an automated loom replacing humans for one particular task, and a highly dexterous robot that can replace humans for any task requiring manual manipulation.
    - krapp 12y ago
      > and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them. I'm sure at some point in the recent past you could have found some formerly employed factory workers who would disagree. It's true, jobs replaced by automation tend to be jobs that people would rather not do, but the loss of employment itself is a different matter. A crappy job is better than no job at all.
      - 12y ago
- transfire 12y ago
  Actually it is a far worse problem. Since the dawn of civilization the overall social structure of man has been a master-slave relationship. This social structure still dominates the world. While things have improved from the worst periods such as ancient slavery and the industrial boom, for the most part all that has changed is the means by which it is orchestrated. On the positive side many of our advances have allowed for greater gradations in this structure, creating many "relative masters", aka the middle class. But still most people are more slave than master. We have managed to trick people into thinking there are no slaves anymore because they get wages and can, if they wish, leave and find a new job. But the truth is much more limited than you probably understand. That reality is only applicable to the middle class of, so called, first world nations. But even the middle class is in a partial slave relationship. And the master side of that equation, whether in slave-wage countries or middle class countries, is entrenched. The powers that be will not give it up willing. So there is also this pressure to prevent automation from displacing workers in any positive way, i.e. a way which would erode the master class. Of course, it is ultimately inevitable, but the result make be uglier than anyone would ever imagine --the masters may just eliminate the slaves when they are no longer needed. They may not even do it consciously. They will sell you (and themselves) on the idea, to be sure. And we won't know it is even happening. Those "other" people will be a problem, for whatever reason (related to the simple fact the they no longer have a stable economic role in society) and they will have to be "dealt with". Eventually of course, you could become one of those "other" people. Interestingly some of those "other" people will slip through the nets and I believe we may see the birth of a new sort-of "wild man" in small pockets of the world, who no longer live as part of modern society, and which modern society just ignores.
tannerc 12y ago
It's when we create the robots that can build (and program) other robots that this conversation will really get interesting. Until then, who's going to be the brains behind making the machines? Certainly humans (albeit, and understandably, a small segment). That's work, right?
greatergoodguy 12y ago
I will do magic tricks.
thuuuomas 12y ago
>"But customer service itself is a human problem." ...Says an unnamed academic who, in all likelihood, hasn't worked retail in the 21st century. Tho, you'd think they'd go to a grocery store once in awhile & be subjected to the customer service atrocity that is the self-checkout. (Or touch an ipad barista at a coffee shop, or patiently repeat "speak to a representative" to an automated telephone system...)
- john_b 12y ago
  Did you even read the article? Right before the part you quoted the author defined customer service to be the un-automatable parts of what we now consider customer service, the purpose of the redefinition being to make people realize that not all aspects of it can be automated. You mentioned problems with the computerized components of what we today call "customer service". You're arguing with a definition the author didn't use, not to mention making a speculative ad hominem attack...
anigbrowl 12y ago
This is an important and increasingly pressing question. On one level, you can ask 'what will we do with ourselves' - that is, to give our lives a sense of purpose and so on. To me that's easy - we already know how people like to entertain or amuse themselves, and beyond simple consumption and hedonism it's also obvious that people are happy to do some kinds of work for self-fulfilment rather than efficiency - eg gardening when you could just buy food or flowers from a farm, washing dishes even though you could get a dishwasher, painting for pleasure even though you could take a photograph and/or have the image printed or repainted on canvas. In short, I don't worry about how we'll occupy our time. But I do worry about the question of how people make a living in these conditions. It's not enough to say 'basic income' because absent a massive economic shift most robots are going to be privately owned, and the owners of such capital will ask why they should donate a large volume of their profit to support non-productive individuals. Put another way, I'm not sure that the arrival of technological abundance will necessarily be accompanied by optimal social structures in the short term. A sudden and drastic acceleration in social stratification followed by unrest sems to be a far more common pattern. A luddite backlash is also a possibility, and a stronger one than usual given the factor of AI, which some people seem to have an atavistic fear of.
- jinushaun 12y ago
  Basic income implies that cash still matters. If we get to this point, society would have to transcend money.
- treenyc 12y ago
  Productivity is over rated. It made sense in a scarcity based economic worldview when we didn't have the technology and know how to create abundant wealth. How do one measure productivity? Is it based on number of (quantity) of products produced and service offered?
xsmasher 12y ago
"The work that robots can't do," just like now. Rewind this conversation about 150 years and ask what the steel-drivers will do when the steam drill puts them out of business.
Zirro 12y ago
I have done a lot of thinking about this lately. In my country a lot of the recent political discussions have revolved around the creation of jobs. Though their ideas differ, they all seem to agree that everyone who is able to work should have a job. I don't think that is required. I believe that (unless humanity faces a devastating event) the times when there is a job available for everyone are gone. Robots will eventually take over a majority of our current jobs. Many peoples first reaction to this is to regard it as if it was a dystopia, but I believe we should embrace it. There are a lot of jobs out there which people choose only because they need an income. If the need for these jobs can be eliminated through the use of robots, and the income of the people can be supplied through a basic income, they can pursue jobs and passions which they didn't dare to do before. The basic income can be financed by replacing current ways of supporting those with poor economies, and will require less money if robots are performing many services. Jobs will still exist, but only for those who are well-educated. Not everyone is suited for that, and I don't think forcing them to choose between poverty or education is a solution. Robots will take over many of our jobs, and I believe it is time to embrace it and change our society for it to work.
- transfire 12y ago
  I we don't embrace it, we will get a dystopia.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
zackmorris 12y ago
I'm concerned that this is one of the great problems that humanity can't deal with, like the tragedy of the commons. Only a small percentage of the population recognizes that freedom from labor is a positive thing. So the way I see it, we have two choices: 1) let the small percentage automate their way to freedom and the rest can join if they wish 2) adopt automation on a wide, institutional scale the way we did with public education and social security Unfortunately, with the political slant of the country leaning so far towards libertarianism at the moment (government = bad, taxes = bad, welfare = bad, etc) I am becoming more convinced every day that we will go with option #1 and create a two-tier society. The tiny elite today has trouble discerning where unearned income comes from. They don’t seem to care if their capital gains come from a working class or automation. As someone who dabbled in dead end manual labor jobs for most of my 20s, I find that appalling. It’s like trying to talk to someone about vegetarianism who has never slaughtered an animal by hand. So, these things will probably go the way they always go. A small percentage who sacrifice tremendously for the greater good of society, with the masses riding the coattails of progress glibly unaware of it. I suppose in the end that that has always been the American way, or at the very least, the western way. Maybe a path towards enlightenment is to picture a day in the near future as we approach the singularity and find that economic gain is no longer tied to labor. It’s going to be a bit like winning the lottery, here and there, small amounts at first but growing larger every day. I will believe that automation has arrived when I begin seeing random acts of selflessness by people who recognize that financially, they have arrived. As in, randomly receiving a call one day that your credit card bill has been paid in full. Or maybe a city receives a large donation for the building of bike paths. Or a solar panel installer goes door to door and gives people free kits to get off the grid and never pay another electric bill. I think small, targeted amounts of money injected directly into the system like that could be quite disruptive. So in the end such ominous changes could come to pass with a whimper instead of a bang. It could be one of the great advances in civilization that people thousands of years from now look back at in awe, wondering how we ever transitioned from a dog-eat-dog hierarchy to egalitarian anarchy. I guess they will have just had to have been there, witnessing the epic stupidity that we’ve witnessed over the course of our lives. Stepping back from that, rejecting it summarily is not such a hard thing to do. Not if you grok that the other side of the threshold is not just possible, but probable. And then be willing to take a leap of faith and persevere long enough to see it through.
NaNaN 12y ago
Let's make games.

19 points by e15ctr0n 12y ago

It simply blows my mind that automation of work can be seen as a negative. The problem isn't in the fact that the work is being automated it's with the fact that we structure our society around work. The simple answer is that without work we could do things that we enjoy doing.

brianbarker 12y ago
Star Trek society. That's what can happen, but only if we progress into a mindset that those who don't work for money are not slackers nor taking away from the success of the wealthy.
- MichaelApproved 12y ago
  We wouldn't need to progress into that society, there are many people who already feel that way. Those people could just branch off. My point isn't to nitpick but to point out that it's closer than you might think.
  - brianbarker 12y ago
    Well, there are some people who think this way. Likely there are many of them on HN. However, watch any presidential race in the US and see the rant about people who mooch off society by not "working hard enough." I come from a red state and that's what I hear around here all the time--terms like "welfare state," "freeloaders," etc. and beyond. I do appreciate the hope that more and more people are coming around! That's all we can hope for.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Until we reach a post scarcity economy, the only way those who don't work can survive is by taking away from those who do work.
shorodei 12y ago
There's a gradient from a "work for food" world to "hunger-free" world. Until that transition is complete, people whose work is lost to automation lose their food.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  That has not been the case historically. So far, when automation has removed jobs, better jobs have been added to the economy in the process. Among the poor in automation heavy economies obesity is a more common problem than starvation.
rayiner 12y ago
I don't think people see automation per se as a negative. Rather, they are skeptical of our ability to restructure our society, and fear the social impact of automation in that context. I mean, what happens when AI replaces programmers? When a designer can "write a program" just by telling a computer in natural language what he wants to do? Not only will most of HN be out of work, but many of our hobbies will be irrelevant. Who will read a blog post about Rust making it easier to write correct concurrent software when some AI is going to handle that much better than a human ever could?
- yogthos 12y ago
  Sure, but the focus should be on how to restructure society as opposed to bemoan automation. It's worth noting that automation of jobs has been going on for a long time now, and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them.
  - zokier 12y ago
    > and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them. there are what, 7 billion people on earth. there is probably somebody who would want to go back to society of manual labor.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I think there is a real difference between an automated loom replacing humans for one particular task, and a highly dexterous robot that can replace humans for any task requiring manual manipulation.
  - krapp 12y ago
    > and nobody would want to go back to doing any of them. I'm sure at some point in the recent past you could have found some formerly employed factory workers who would disagree. It's true, jobs replaced by automation tend to be jobs that people would rather not do, but the loss of employment itself is a different matter. A crappy job is better than no job at all.
    - 12y ago
transfire 12y ago
Actually it is a far worse problem. Since the dawn of civilization the overall social structure of man has been a master-slave relationship. This social structure still dominates the world. While things have improved from the worst periods such as ancient slavery and the industrial boom, for the most part all that has changed is the means by which it is orchestrated. On the positive side many of our advances have allowed for greater gradations in this structure, creating many "relative masters", aka the middle class. But still most people are more slave than master. We have managed to trick people into thinking there are no slaves anymore because they get wages and can, if they wish, leave and find a new job. But the truth is much more limited than you probably understand. That reality is only applicable to the middle class of, so called, first world nations. But even the middle class is in a partial slave relationship. And the master side of that equation, whether in slave-wage countries or middle class countries, is entrenched. The powers that be will not give it up willing. So there is also this pressure to prevent automation from displacing workers in any positive way, i.e. a way which would erode the master class. Of course, it is ultimately inevitable, but the result make be uglier than anyone would ever imagine --the masters may just eliminate the slaves when they are no longer needed. They may not even do it consciously. They will sell you (and themselves) on the idea, to be sure. And we won't know it is even happening. Those "other" people will be a problem, for whatever reason (related to the simple fact the they no longer have a stable economic role in society) and they will have to be "dealt with". Eventually of course, you could become one of those "other" people. Interestingly some of those "other" people will slip through the nets and I believe we may see the birth of a new sort-of "wild man" in small pockets of the world, who no longer live as part of modern society, and which modern society just ignores.

tannerc 12y ago

It's when we create the robots that can build (and program) other robots that this conversation will really get interesting. Until then, who's going to be the brains behind making the machines? Certainly humans (albeit, and understandably, a small segment). That's work, right?

greatergoodguy 12y ago

I will do magic tricks.

thuuuomas 12y ago

>"But customer service itself is a human problem." ...Says an unnamed academic who, in all likelihood, hasn't worked retail in the 21st century. Tho, you'd think they'd go to a grocery store once in awhile & be subjected to the customer service atrocity that is the self-checkout. (Or touch an ipad barista at a coffee shop, or patiently repeat "speak to a representative" to an automated telephone system...)

john_b 12y ago
Did you even read the article? Right before the part you quoted the author defined customer service to be the un-automatable parts of what we now consider customer service, the purpose of the redefinition being to make people realize that not all aspects of it can be automated. You mentioned problems with the computerized components of what we today call "customer service". You're arguing with a definition the author didn't use, not to mention making a speculative ad hominem attack...

anigbrowl 12y ago

This is an important and increasingly pressing question. On one level, you can ask 'what will we do with ourselves' - that is, to give our lives a sense of purpose and so on. To me that's easy - we already know how people like to entertain or amuse themselves, and beyond simple consumption and hedonism it's also obvious that people are happy to do some kinds of work for self-fulfilment rather than efficiency - eg gardening when you could just buy food or flowers from a farm, washing dishes even though you could get a dishwasher, painting for pleasure even though you could take a photograph and/or have the image printed or repainted on canvas. In short, I don't worry about how we'll occupy our time. But I do worry about the question of how people make a living in these conditions. It's not enough to say 'basic income' because absent a massive economic shift most robots are going to be privately owned, and the owners of such capital will ask why they should donate a large volume of their profit to support non-productive individuals. Put another way, I'm not sure that the arrival of technological abundance will necessarily be accompanied by optimal social structures in the short term. A sudden and drastic acceleration in social stratification followed by unrest sems to be a far more common pattern. A luddite backlash is also a possibility, and a stronger one than usual given the factor of AI, which some people seem to have an atavistic fear of.

jinushaun 12y ago
Basic income implies that cash still matters. If we get to this point, society would have to transcend money.
treenyc 12y ago
Productivity is over rated. It made sense in a scarcity based economic worldview when we didn't have the technology and know how to create abundant wealth. How do one measure productivity? Is it based on number of (quantity) of products produced and service offered?

xsmasher 12y ago

"The work that robots can't do," just like now. Rewind this conversation about 150 years and ask what the steel-drivers will do when the steam drill puts them out of business.

Zirro 12y ago

I have done a lot of thinking about this lately. In my country a lot of the recent political discussions have revolved around the creation of jobs. Though their ideas differ, they all seem to agree that everyone who is able to work should have a job. I don't think that is required. I believe that (unless humanity faces a devastating event) the times when there is a job available for everyone are gone. Robots will eventually take over a majority of our current jobs. Many peoples first reaction to this is to regard it as if it was a dystopia, but I believe we should embrace it. There are a lot of jobs out there which people choose only because they need an income. If the need for these jobs can be eliminated through the use of robots, and the income of the people can be supplied through a basic income, they can pursue jobs and passions which they didn't dare to do before. The basic income can be financed by replacing current ways of supporting those with poor economies, and will require less money if robots are performing many services. Jobs will still exist, but only for those who are well-educated. Not everyone is suited for that, and I don't think forcing them to choose between poverty or education is a solution. Robots will take over many of our jobs, and I believe it is time to embrace it and change our society for it to work.

transfire 12y ago
I we don't embrace it, we will get a dystopia.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

zackmorris 12y ago

I'm concerned that this is one of the great problems that humanity can't deal with, like the tragedy of the commons. Only a small percentage of the population recognizes that freedom from labor is a positive thing. So the way I see it, we have two choices: 1) let the small percentage automate their way to freedom and the rest can join if they wish 2) adopt automation on a wide, institutional scale the way we did with public education and social security Unfortunately, with the political slant of the country leaning so far towards libertarianism at the moment (government = bad, taxes = bad, welfare = bad, etc) I am becoming more convinced every day that we will go with option #1 and create a two-tier society. The tiny elite today has trouble discerning where unearned income comes from. They don’t seem to care if their capital gains come from a working class or automation. As someone who dabbled in dead end manual labor jobs for most of my 20s, I find that appalling. It’s like trying to talk to someone about vegetarianism who has never slaughtered an animal by hand. So, these things will probably go the way they always go. A small percentage who sacrifice tremendously for the greater good of society, with the masses riding the coattails of progress glibly unaware of it. I suppose in the end that that has always been the American way, or at the very least, the western way. Maybe a path towards enlightenment is to picture a day in the near future as we approach the singularity and find that economic gain is no longer tied to labor. It’s going to be a bit like winning the lottery, here and there, small amounts at first but growing larger every day. I will believe that automation has arrived when I begin seeing random acts of selflessness by people who recognize that financially, they have arrived. As in, randomly receiving a call one day that your credit card bill has been paid in full. Or maybe a city receives a large donation for the building of bike paths. Or a solar panel installer goes door to door and gives people free kits to get off the grid and never pay another electric bill. I think small, targeted amounts of money injected directly into the system like that could be quite disruptive. So in the end such ominous changes could come to pass with a whimper instead of a bang. It could be one of the great advances in civilization that people thousands of years from now look back at in awe, wondering how we ever transitioned from a dog-eat-dog hierarchy to egalitarian anarchy. I guess they will have just had to have been there, witnessing the epic stupidity that we’ve witnessed over the course of our lives. Stepping back from that, rejecting it summarily is not such a hard thing to do. Not if you grok that the other side of the threshold is not just possible, but probable. And then be willing to take a leap of faith and persevere long enough to see it through.

NaNaN 12y ago

Let's make games.