9 ms·

The Machines Are Coming

88 points by lambtron 11y ago

polymatter 11y ago
I highly recommend CGP Greys video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU) for a good overview of the issue. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055 for similar discussion.
- blumkvist 11y ago
  There is a serious wrong assumption in that video. His claim is that there weren't any new job types after industrialization. The number of new job types is irrelevant. The change was in percentage of the population doing knowledge work vs. manual labor. It will shift just the same way now. Yeah, we won't magically think of new types of jobs. We will just shift from knowledge to creativity and improving service level like in education and healthcare, for example. A teacher on every 5 kids? Yes, please!
ThomPete 11y ago
Machines are replacing higher and higher levels of abstract thinking. One of the biggest illusions of how we humans see ourselves is to think that our function as humans that make us valuable on the job market. Yet we mostly use just a small subset of our abilities to perform jobs even the intellectual ones. And so the irony is that a Radiologist spending a decade getting educated and makes 300K a year is more likely to be loosing their job than a cleaning lady.
- protonfish 11y ago
  This seems exactly like the same worries that have always surrounded automated production and have always resulted in long-term improvements in quality of life. The article claims that AI could be different, but suggests no reasons why.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    I am not sure what you mean. If AI replaces higher and higher levels of abstract thinking then it's always been true and in fact if you look at job creation per decade. https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united-states/ https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united-... Its shows something else than the claim that technology replaces the jobs that are lost due to technology. And even more specific numbers http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/destroying.jobs_.chart1x910_0.jpg http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/d... Shows how production output and employment is separating. What have been clowding this reality is in fact the cost of products and globalization which made it look like job growth would be steady in the west and then spread to the rest of the world. The reality is that job growth have been declining decady by decade and even worse so. The jobs that are left are either very very well paid but few or grossly underpaid (but still priced logically compared to it's relative value. "The ludite fallacy" is in fact itself a fallacy. How many cars are still occupied as serious transportation means in the West? We are simply a higher level animal than the horse but also our skills can be replaced. Hardware and software continues to evolve, we don't.
    - protonfish 11y ago
      Pointing to graphs showing decreased U.S. job growth without mention of the loss of labor union power or export of manufacturing overseas is ignorant in the extreme. Tyranny looks the same economically irrespective of technology.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        Pray tell. How does loos of labor union power or manufacturing overseas by any metrics detract from my point?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
josephagoss 11y ago
Just a thought, and one I am not 100% behind, is that if these machines give more and more power to employers perhaps this will allow more employees to become employers? Employers of machines... I'd imagine this technology having the potential to enable many people to perhaps start businesses much more easily or cheaply. Is it possible to imagine every single human being a self employed business? Could the economy work that way?
- ThomPete 11y ago
  No because technology and it's global reach also turn the industries into a "there can only be one" game. This is the dark side of making products cheaper for consumers. It will always require consolidation to keep having a margin while the products more and more accessible. There are a couple of friction points with regards to technology and that is dependence on local workforce and industries where people are always looking for a better solution and in areas without any benefits for automation. But there is no need for more than one taxi company once the cars become self-driving.
  - camillomiller 11y ago
    No, if you consider capitalism as the only model. Who knows, maybe the advent of the machines would move us toward a post-capitalist model of sort... Really hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      > Really hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden. What leads you to that conclusion? I'm not saying you are wrong (who knows) but I'm curious how you reached it. I can't decide whether the transition is likely to be evolutionary or revolutionary, I think a lot of it will come down to how it's handled over the period.
      - camillomiller 11y ago
        I'd say that's because: - power is extremely centralized in our Western society and the mechanisms of conservation are much more sound than in the past, because... - ...the "masses" are generally richer, therefore less prone to really feel a urge to overthrow the current setting. We all have much more to lose, if you want, than the people that took part in revolutions in the past. - ideologies strong enough to bypass the previous reasons are basically dead The only sudden transition could come from a planetary war or global-level event (even natural disaster), but the tipping point of our current equilibrium, in my opinion, is much harder to reach today, thanks to technology, global communications, the role of the Media and the intertwined financial interests of all nations.
golergka 11y ago
On humanity scale, it looks differently: we don't need the amount of labor we have now to maintain the current level of consumption. We can produce the same amount of goods and services without 100% of people contributing. May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your input.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Be interesting to see how fast we realise this and if that will vary by region. Parts of Europe strike me as the ones most likely to lead the charge (the Swiss had an actual vote on Basic Income just recently) and many existing benefit systems (welfare systems) come fairly close to a ad-hoc de-facto basic income. Assuming the basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs, I'd be quite happy (as long as I could afford a reasonable computer and internet) to just write open source software for the rest of my life. The only reason I write any proprietary software is to pay the bills with that incentive removed I'd program just as much.
  - wmat 11y ago
    Isn't it also just a matter of time before machines are writing the software?
    - yourapostasy 11y ago
      If that became true, I'd just switch to basic research. There are an infinite number of open-ended questions to answer in the universe. If machines become better at basic research than humans, then we have achieved one of the key features of Banks' Culture. That's a feature, not a bug.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Whoa there. I think there are a certain, countable number of fundamental questions to answer about the universe. And you can count them with your fingers and toes. They are the fundamental constants, and they're already known to 3 or 4 decimal places.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
Every week we have this conversation and every week it's the same thing, a shrug and no real solution. I think it's going to take a clear "line in the sand" event for anyone to actually figure out how to solve this issue.
- zanny 11y ago
  People literally scream UBI in these threads nowadays. Every time it comes up someone does way too much work disproving the arguments about "its too expensive" or "its not enough" and then they shut up until the next batch of naysayers comes along. Discussion is important, but really, this is starting to be repetitious. I can trace back my first posts on this topic, back when I was doing those long form investigative reports, back to 2012 on reddit, and 2013 here. And the worst part is we now have a literal library of highly qualified writing and video about the topic, and all were doing is reposting links to this stuff every time someone brings up regurgitated complaints... Maybe HN should just sticky "yadda yadda, UBI fixes economy, blah blah startups".
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    That is because you keep posting Basic Income propaganda. It is never going to work and producing a library of bullshit isn't going to change that anymore than all the books on Christian apology suddenly makes God answer prayers. Normally I wouldn't care but if we stay the current course we may just have a chance of bootstrapping The Federation/The Culture in my lifetime, but if the UBI gets implemented that will permanently destroy the economy and we will die, just a few meters from the finish line.
    - astrange 11y ago
      What would that current course be?
karmacondon 11y ago
Is there any evidence that machines are actually causing significant unemployment? Articles of this type are composed of anecdotes. Machines can now do this or that, several individuals lost their jobs to machines, etc. Do we know that jobs aren't being created as fast as they are being destroyed? The siren song of the hype machine is very tempting. But it would be comforting to know that there's some substance to the implication of this article before we start taking baseball bats to technology. There are several compelling social, economic and historical reasons to believe that people will continue creating jobs for other people, for as long as humans exist.
- transfire 11y ago
  B/c the current system requires people to work to survive (for the most part), you have to look at where the jobs are shifting, more than the overall number of jobs being destroyed. Two areas of employment stand out -- the huge increase in administrative work (healthcare especially) and the huge rise in "scams", i.e. the number of people trying to sell worthless products over the phone, tv and internet. Here is an example of the former http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administr...
bsenftner 11y ago
If you have not read the sci fi short story "Manna" by Marshall Brain, then you should. It is a 20 minute read looking back at the automation revolution that pretty much destroys and then remakes civilization. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- thret 11y ago
  This story grows more significant with each passing year.
- sukilot 11y ago
  Sadly, its "happy ending" is still quite bleak.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kleiba 11y ago
What ever happened to the utopian dream of a world where nobody needs to do work because intelligent machines do all the necessary chores for us? People are freed from labor but may chose to work if they enjoy it, or focus on art, philosophy, or simply leisure. While there's much to be criticized about such a naive idea, it seems to me sometimes that despite the tremendous productivity gains we have seen since the industrial revolution, it's not the common man who benefits most from technical progress. Of course, it's indisputable that the quality of life has improved dramatically across the board, and we have more spare time in our lives now than previous generations. But society is still such that you need to work 40+ hours every week if you want to be part of the middle-class. Machines are not freeing men from labor. They're used to create competitive pressure. At the end of the day, the gross benefit goes into the pockets of a few, while the majority are kept in the same dependence structures as always.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Iain M. Banks always pointed out that the citizens of the Culture definitely had jobs, and that it was important - people want to work, and to feel valuable. This is something we learn over and over again with aid programs. Nobody (in general) likes to feel like they get a handout, they like to feel like they earn it or otherwise contribute something valuable. To a huge extent, I think we're going to have a problem until we figure out how to address that tension. How do we gainfully employ people, and have their work respected by the rest of society, when we're automating away their jobs in the first place?
  - pacala 11y ago
    > people want to work, and to feel valuable. That doesn't translate into "people want to work 50 hours week under constant petty pressure from management". Maybe some people feel valuable if they cook a great meal and share it with friends. Maybe a 2h workday is all what is needed to feel valuable.
    - ra1n85 11y ago
      There are differences. Some people derive their identity and esteem from their work. Some don't. For a primitive example of the above in action, try to deprive a German shepherd of a working role. Then do the same with a pug and observe the differences in responses.
transfire 11y ago
There is only one ultimate solution: Basic Income. We need to end the division between those who receive welfare and those who don't. We can do this by having everyone receive the same amount regardless of means. For the last few decades we have been making up for job loss due to automation by creating ever larger bureaucracies. Consider how much paperwork is now involved in healthcare compared to 50 years ago. While we might be able to continue this foolishness for some time (after all, what's 100,000 pages of tax code compared to 100,000,000?) we only hurt ourselves as a whole by doing so.
- sukilot 11y ago
  I used to think basic income was effective poverty-welfare. No I realize that basic income is a bulwark against enslavement of the masses by the elites.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    And security for the elite that there is in fact a mass market for them to sell their products to.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      There is no point in making products people can buy if I also have to give them the money to pay me.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        Oh but there is. Thats how it works today it's just conditional rather than unconditional and a lot of those money are being given to corporations as tax deductions and subsides not to those who actually need it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- ra1n85 11y ago
  So we need basic income collected and delivered by a government bureaucracy to prevent further growth of government bureaucracies?
jqm 11y ago
I don't see this as a negative although there will be a transition. The careers I most hope are replaced soon are politicians. I'm pretty sure my coffee maker currently has the capability to do at least a good a job as Ted Cruz.
guiambros 11y ago
One of the linked posts is this 2013 article about an automated lie detector being tested at U.S. borders: http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-detector/ http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-detector/ I have mixed feelings about it.
kennethh 11y ago
Technology have always made some jobs obsolete. 100 years ago, jobs like barrel maker, timber floater was among top 10 jobs. None of those jobs exists anymore. There will always be new jobs, new possibilities. Automation make products cheaper as a general rule even thought the central bankers try and reduce the value of money as much as possible. Normal people today can buy stuff every day which even Kings could do 100 years ago. Electronics, but also food from all over the world which is available all year. But why do we still work as much as we do?

88 points by lambtron 11y ago

I highly recommend CGP Greys video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU) for a good overview of the issue. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055 for similar discussion.

blumkvist 11y ago
There is a serious wrong assumption in that video. His claim is that there weren't any new job types after industrialization. The number of new job types is irrelevant. The change was in percentage of the population doing knowledge work vs. manual labor. It will shift just the same way now. Yeah, we won't magically think of new types of jobs. We will just shift from knowledge to creativity and improving service level like in education and healthcare, for example. A teacher on every 5 kids? Yes, please!

ThomPete 11y ago

Machines are replacing higher and higher levels of abstract thinking. One of the biggest illusions of how we humans see ourselves is to think that our function as humans that make us valuable on the job market. Yet we mostly use just a small subset of our abilities to perform jobs even the intellectual ones. And so the irony is that a Radiologist spending a decade getting educated and makes 300K a year is more likely to be loosing their job than a cleaning lady.

protonfish 11y ago
This seems exactly like the same worries that have always surrounded automated production and have always resulted in long-term improvements in quality of life. The article claims that AI could be different, but suggests no reasons why.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  I am not sure what you mean. If AI replaces higher and higher levels of abstract thinking then it's always been true and in fact if you look at job creation per decade. https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united-states/ https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united-... Its shows something else than the claim that technology replaces the jobs that are lost due to technology. And even more specific numbers http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/destroying.jobs_.chart1x910_0.jpg http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/d... Shows how production output and employment is separating. What have been clowding this reality is in fact the cost of products and globalization which made it look like job growth would be steady in the west and then spread to the rest of the world. The reality is that job growth have been declining decady by decade and even worse so. The jobs that are left are either very very well paid but few or grossly underpaid (but still priced logically compared to it's relative value. "The ludite fallacy" is in fact itself a fallacy. How many cars are still occupied as serious transportation means in the West? We are simply a higher level animal than the horse but also our skills can be replaced. Hardware and software continues to evolve, we don't.
  - protonfish 11y ago
    Pointing to graphs showing decreased U.S. job growth without mention of the loss of labor union power or export of manufacturing overseas is ignorant in the extreme. Tyranny looks the same economically irrespective of technology.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Pray tell. How does loos of labor union power or manufacturing overseas by any metrics detract from my point?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

josephagoss 11y ago

Just a thought, and one I am not 100% behind, is that if these machines give more and more power to employers perhaps this will allow more employees to become employers? Employers of machines... I'd imagine this technology having the potential to enable many people to perhaps start businesses much more easily or cheaply. Is it possible to imagine every single human being a self employed business? Could the economy work that way?

ThomPete 11y ago
No because technology and it's global reach also turn the industries into a "there can only be one" game. This is the dark side of making products cheaper for consumers. It will always require consolidation to keep having a margin while the products more and more accessible. There are a couple of friction points with regards to technology and that is dependence on local workforce and industries where people are always looking for a better solution and in areas without any benefits for automation. But there is no need for more than one taxi company once the cars become self-driving.
- camillomiller 11y ago
  No, if you consider capitalism as the only model. Who knows, maybe the advent of the machines would move us toward a post-capitalist model of sort... Really hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    > Really hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden. What leads you to that conclusion? I'm not saying you are wrong (who knows) but I'm curious how you reached it. I can't decide whether the transition is likely to be evolutionary or revolutionary, I think a lot of it will come down to how it's handled over the period.
    - camillomiller 11y ago
      I'd say that's because: - power is extremely centralized in our Western society and the mechanisms of conservation are much more sound than in the past, because... - ...the "masses" are generally richer, therefore less prone to really feel a urge to overthrow the current setting. We all have much more to lose, if you want, than the people that took part in revolutions in the past. - ideologies strong enough to bypass the previous reasons are basically dead The only sudden transition could come from a planetary war or global-level event (even natural disaster), but the tipping point of our current equilibrium, in my opinion, is much harder to reach today, thanks to technology, global communications, the role of the Media and the intertwined financial interests of all nations.

golergka 11y ago

On humanity scale, it looks differently: we don't need the amount of labor we have now to maintain the current level of consumption. We can produce the same amount of goods and services without 100% of people contributing. May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your input.

noir_lord 11y ago
Be interesting to see how fast we realise this and if that will vary by region. Parts of Europe strike me as the ones most likely to lead the charge (the Swiss had an actual vote on Basic Income just recently) and many existing benefit systems (welfare systems) come fairly close to a ad-hoc de-facto basic income. Assuming the basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs, I'd be quite happy (as long as I could afford a reasonable computer and internet) to just write open source software for the rest of my life. The only reason I write any proprietary software is to pay the bills with that incentive removed I'd program just as much.
- wmat 11y ago
  Isn't it also just a matter of time before machines are writing the software?
  - yourapostasy 11y ago
    If that became true, I'd just switch to basic research. There are an infinite number of open-ended questions to answer in the universe. If machines become better at basic research than humans, then we have achieved one of the key features of Banks' Culture. That's a feature, not a bug.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Whoa there. I think there are a certain, countable number of fundamental questions to answer about the universe. And you can count them with your fingers and toes. They are the fundamental constants, and they're already known to 3 or 4 decimal places.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

Every week we have this conversation and every week it's the same thing, a shrug and no real solution. I think it's going to take a clear "line in the sand" event for anyone to actually figure out how to solve this issue.

zanny 11y ago
People literally scream UBI in these threads nowadays. Every time it comes up someone does way too much work disproving the arguments about "its too expensive" or "its not enough" and then they shut up until the next batch of naysayers comes along. Discussion is important, but really, this is starting to be repetitious. I can trace back my first posts on this topic, back when I was doing those long form investigative reports, back to 2012 on reddit, and 2013 here. And the worst part is we now have a literal library of highly qualified writing and video about the topic, and all were doing is reposting links to this stuff every time someone brings up regurgitated complaints... Maybe HN should just sticky "yadda yadda, UBI fixes economy, blah blah startups".
- tomjen3 11y ago
  That is because you keep posting Basic Income propaganda. It is never going to work and producing a library of bullshit isn't going to change that anymore than all the books on Christian apology suddenly makes God answer prayers. Normally I wouldn't care but if we stay the current course we may just have a chance of bootstrapping The Federation/The Culture in my lifetime, but if the UBI gets implemented that will permanently destroy the economy and we will die, just a few meters from the finish line.
  - astrange 11y ago
    What would that current course be?

karmacondon 11y ago

Is there any evidence that machines are actually causing significant unemployment? Articles of this type are composed of anecdotes. Machines can now do this or that, several individuals lost their jobs to machines, etc. Do we know that jobs aren't being created as fast as they are being destroyed? The siren song of the hype machine is very tempting. But it would be comforting to know that there's some substance to the implication of this article before we start taking baseball bats to technology. There are several compelling social, economic and historical reasons to believe that people will continue creating jobs for other people, for as long as humans exist.

transfire 11y ago
B/c the current system requires people to work to survive (for the most part), you have to look at where the jobs are shifting, more than the overall number of jobs being destroyed. Two areas of employment stand out -- the huge increase in administrative work (healthcare especially) and the huge rise in "scams", i.e. the number of people trying to sell worthless products over the phone, tv and internet. Here is an example of the former http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administr...

bsenftner 11y ago

If you have not read the sci fi short story "Manna" by Marshall Brain, then you should. It is a 20 minute read looking back at the automation revolution that pretty much destroys and then remakes civilization. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

thret 11y ago
This story grows more significant with each passing year.
sukilot 11y ago
Sadly, its "happy ending" is still quite bleak.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kleiba 11y ago

What ever happened to the utopian dream of a world where nobody needs to do work because intelligent machines do all the necessary chores for us? People are freed from labor but may chose to work if they enjoy it, or focus on art, philosophy, or simply leisure. While there's much to be criticized about such a naive idea, it seems to me sometimes that despite the tremendous productivity gains we have seen since the industrial revolution, it's not the common man who benefits most from technical progress. Of course, it's indisputable that the quality of life has improved dramatically across the board, and we have more spare time in our lives now than previous generations. But society is still such that you need to work 40+ hours every week if you want to be part of the middle-class. Machines are not freeing men from labor. They're used to create competitive pressure. At the end of the day, the gross benefit goes into the pockets of a few, while the majority are kept in the same dependence structures as always.

XorNot 11y ago
Iain M. Banks always pointed out that the citizens of the Culture definitely had jobs, and that it was important - people want to work, and to feel valuable. This is something we learn over and over again with aid programs. Nobody (in general) likes to feel like they get a handout, they like to feel like they earn it or otherwise contribute something valuable. To a huge extent, I think we're going to have a problem until we figure out how to address that tension. How do we gainfully employ people, and have their work respected by the rest of society, when we're automating away their jobs in the first place?
- pacala 11y ago
  > people want to work, and to feel valuable. That doesn't translate into "people want to work 50 hours week under constant petty pressure from management". Maybe some people feel valuable if they cook a great meal and share it with friends. Maybe a 2h workday is all what is needed to feel valuable.
  - ra1n85 11y ago
    There are differences. Some people derive their identity and esteem from their work. Some don't. For a primitive example of the above in action, try to deprive a German shepherd of a working role. Then do the same with a pug and observe the differences in responses.

transfire 11y ago

There is only one ultimate solution: Basic Income. We need to end the division between those who receive welfare and those who don't. We can do this by having everyone receive the same amount regardless of means. For the last few decades we have been making up for job loss due to automation by creating ever larger bureaucracies. Consider how much paperwork is now involved in healthcare compared to 50 years ago. While we might be able to continue this foolishness for some time (after all, what's 100,000 pages of tax code compared to 100,000,000?) we only hurt ourselves as a whole by doing so.

sukilot 11y ago
I used to think basic income was effective poverty-welfare. No I realize that basic income is a bulwark against enslavement of the masses by the elites.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  And security for the elite that there is in fact a mass market for them to sell their products to.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    There is no point in making products people can buy if I also have to give them the money to pay me.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Oh but there is. Thats how it works today it's just conditional rather than unconditional and a lot of those money are being given to corporations as tax deductions and subsides not to those who actually need it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ra1n85 11y ago
So we need basic income collected and delivered by a government bureaucracy to prevent further growth of government bureaucracies?

jqm 11y ago

I don't see this as a negative although there will be a transition. The careers I most hope are replaced soon are politicians. I'm pretty sure my coffee maker currently has the capability to do at least a good a job as Ted Cruz.

guiambros 11y ago

One of the linked posts is this 2013 article about an automated lie detector being tested at U.S. borders: http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-detector/ http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-detector/ I have mixed feelings about it.

kennethh 11y ago

Technology have always made some jobs obsolete. 100 years ago, jobs like barrel maker, timber floater was among top 10 jobs. None of those jobs exists anymore. There will always be new jobs, new possibilities. Automation make products cheaper as a general rule even thought the central bankers try and reduce the value of money as much as possible. Normal people today can buy stuff every day which even Kings could do 100 years ago. Electronics, but also food from all over the world which is available all year. But why do we still work as much as we do?