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I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the p

by rndn 12y ago

I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the population is unemployable it will necessarily lead to social acceptance. People will simply have a lot of leisure time.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
It's more than that. You hit on it in the last part of your comment. This is about having tons of leisure life. How is it parceled out? How do people stay engaged in life and happy? Remember, there are already lots of rich people who have as much leisure life as they want. And it's not a good thing for many of them. It's like a study posted on HN said a while back: you can have a meaningful life, or your can have a happy life. They are not the same thing. The more people that have meaningful lives, whether sweeping the streets, inventing new things, or writing novels? The better we all are. The more people choosing simply to be happy? Society will stagnate and die. So this isn't some case of somebody telling somebody else what to do. Assuming we are entering the age of "robots do everything", our species has a crisis of meaning at hand.
- rndn 12y ago
  But even in leisure time there are things to achieve, for example learning new skills, exercising and gaining reputation in virtual worlds. I think the concept of "meaning in life" is more flexible than often assumed.
nhaehnle 12y ago
It is not just social acceptance, though. It is also the problem that one's livelihood is closely tied to one's employment. With both these things, the question is how the social acceptance and the detachment of livelihood from employment comes about. Will it require revolutions and civil war with accompanying bloodshed when the downtrodden unemployed rise up? Or will we be collectively smart enough to reform our economic systems before the rift through society becomes too deep?
- rndn 12y ago
  Maybe I'm thinking in too simple terms, but I can't imagine that being a major problem because it will affect people from all classes in the same way and the change will probably be fairly quick (once the technology is available, everyone will want it immediately to remain competitive). Intelligence is distributed like a Gauss bell, so it will equally hit lower, upper and middle class, making the necessity for a basic income very quickly obvious. I don't think the lower class will be excluded from such a social system. I personally think the bigger risks are AIs themselves, used as weapons or when they go out of control.
  - nhaehnle 12y ago
    "it will affect people from all classes in the same way" No. Given a roughly capitalist system as we have today, the vast majority of the economic benefits of AI is captured by "capital"[1]. People from a sufficiently rich and powerful background will not suffer like those who do not have any capital to speak of. Only those without capital need a basic income. [1] Which is a problematic term, hence the quotation marks.
    - rndn 12y ago
      I mean that more in personal terms ("look, this machine is more skillful/faster/smarter than you") than in economical terms. There will be a huge impact on the service sector, so upper and middle class will be able to personally relate to the lower class and show empathy. I think the middle class will mainly promote the changes.
- gonvaled 12y ago
  It will be difficult for a malnourished and disarmed majority, with little information about the structure of power, to raise against an AI army. And until the AI army is ready, the AI capitalists can finance an elite of soldiers to keep the hungry masses at bay.
gonvaled 12y ago
Or, more people (all those becoming unemployed because of advances in AI) will chase the little jobs remaining (those not taken over by AI), creating three classes: A) the 1%: capitalists financing (and controlling) AI, will get phenomenal rewards once AI has taken over production of basic utilities, food, water distribution. Only political control will keep AI monopolies from appearing. B) the 49.5%: those lucky enough to get a job in one of the areas not taken over by AI. They will have to be extremely competent, and lower their salary: they are competing in a very limited and not necessarily very complicated skill-sets (those skill-sets not taken over by AI) with 99% of the human population C) the other 49.5%: those who are not making the cut to get a job. (the sizes of the groups B & C obviously depend on the number of available jobs) People will be able to move from B to C, but never to A (since building an AI empire from scratch is impossible, specially when capital has become extremely concentrated) People in B are barely making ends meet, and people in C are in continuous existential danger. Political engagement drops to a minimum. Capitalists collude to create monopolies, raise prices and basically destroy democracy. The human race splits in two distinct classes, and the lower class is basically enslaved.
- rndn 12y ago
  As I wrote below, I think that increasing machine intelligence will hit all classes both on in personal and economic terms. As soon as robots outperform many people in currently middle to upper middle class service sector, enough people will be affected to make something like a basic income a necessity.

by rndn 12y ago

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

It's more than that. You hit on it in the last part of your comment. This is about having tons of leisure life. How is it parceled out? How do people stay engaged in life and happy? Remember, there are already lots of rich people who have as much leisure life as they want. And it's not a good thing for many of them. It's like a study posted on HN said a while back: you can have a meaningful life, or your can have a happy life. They are not the same thing. The more people that have meaningful lives, whether sweeping the streets, inventing new things, or writing novels? The better we all are. The more people choosing simply to be happy? Society will stagnate and die. So this isn't some case of somebody telling somebody else what to do. Assuming we are entering the age of "robots do everything", our species has a crisis of meaning at hand.

rndn 12y ago
But even in leisure time there are things to achieve, for example learning new skills, exercising and gaining reputation in virtual worlds. I think the concept of "meaning in life" is more flexible than often assumed.

nhaehnle 12y ago

It is not just social acceptance, though. It is also the problem that one's livelihood is closely tied to one's employment. With both these things, the question is how the social acceptance and the detachment of livelihood from employment comes about. Will it require revolutions and civil war with accompanying bloodshed when the downtrodden unemployed rise up? Or will we be collectively smart enough to reform our economic systems before the rift through society becomes too deep?

rndn 12y ago
Maybe I'm thinking in too simple terms, but I can't imagine that being a major problem because it will affect people from all classes in the same way and the change will probably be fairly quick (once the technology is available, everyone will want it immediately to remain competitive). Intelligence is distributed like a Gauss bell, so it will equally hit lower, upper and middle class, making the necessity for a basic income very quickly obvious. I don't think the lower class will be excluded from such a social system. I personally think the bigger risks are AIs themselves, used as weapons or when they go out of control.
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  "it will affect people from all classes in the same way" No. Given a roughly capitalist system as we have today, the vast majority of the economic benefits of AI is captured by "capital"[1]. People from a sufficiently rich and powerful background will not suffer like those who do not have any capital to speak of. Only those without capital need a basic income. [1] Which is a problematic term, hence the quotation marks.
  - rndn 12y ago
    I mean that more in personal terms ("look, this machine is more skillful/faster/smarter than you") than in economical terms. There will be a huge impact on the service sector, so upper and middle class will be able to personally relate to the lower class and show empathy. I think the middle class will mainly promote the changes.
gonvaled 12y ago
It will be difficult for a malnourished and disarmed majority, with little information about the structure of power, to raise against an AI army. And until the AI army is ready, the AI capitalists can finance an elite of soldiers to keep the hungry masses at bay.

gonvaled 12y ago

Or, more people (all those becoming unemployed because of advances in AI) will chase the little jobs remaining (those not taken over by AI), creating three classes: A) the 1%: capitalists financing (and controlling) AI, will get phenomenal rewards once AI has taken over production of basic utilities, food, water distribution. Only political control will keep AI monopolies from appearing. B) the 49.5%: those lucky enough to get a job in one of the areas not taken over by AI. They will have to be extremely competent, and lower their salary: they are competing in a very limited and not necessarily very complicated skill-sets (those skill-sets not taken over by AI) with 99% of the human population C) the other 49.5%: those who are not making the cut to get a job. (the sizes of the groups B & C obviously depend on the number of available jobs) People will be able to move from B to C, but never to A (since building an AI empire from scratch is impossible, specially when capital has become extremely concentrated) People in B are barely making ends meet, and people in C are in continuous existential danger. Political engagement drops to a minimum. Capitalists collude to create monopolies, raise prices and basically destroy democracy. The human race splits in two distinct classes, and the lower class is basically enslaved.

rndn 12y ago
As I wrote below, I think that increasing machine intelligence will hit all classes both on in personal and economic terms. As soon as robots outperform many people in currently middle to upper middle class service sector, enough people will be affected to make something like a basic income a necessity.