7 ms·

> watch the number of entry-level jobs explode and the demand for robotic work tank (like McD's filling sodas with robotics). People have better things to do t

> watch the number of entry-level jobs explode and the demand for robotic work tank (like McD's filling sodas with robotics). People have better things to do than repetitive, unfulfilling tasks (unless they enjoy it, of course). We need to get to the Star Trek utopia... what you're talking about sounds like halting progress.

humanrebar 11y ago
> what you're talking about sounds like halting progress Depends on what you mean by progress. Giving someone work experience is progress for her. I'm not talking about halting progress. I'm talking dividing the employment and subsistence problems. There will still be demand for automation. It just won't be artificially inflated by making employment more expensive than it has to be.
- ahallock 11y ago
  So artificially increasing the demand for automation is bad, but incentivizing people to have more children and artificially increasing the population is good? > Giving someone work experience is progress for her. Progress is getting to the point where people can have technology provide the essentials, so that these repetitive jobs are just for fun, rather than a means for survival. It's like in DS9 where Sisko's father runs a restaurant--for pleasure. If he'd been sick or no longer interested in working, he wouldn't have to worry about starving or finding a place to live.
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    Do you want employment and consumer spending or do you want automation and progress? They're mostly mutually exclusive, and we'll have to face up to that fact.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I want automation and technology to fuel progress, and provide for people so they can "spend" without the need for employment. "Our infrastructure provides you with X to spend every time period. Spend on what you'd like. Earn more if you'd like with a job/tasks/work of your choosing."
      - filoeleven 11y ago
        For an illustration of how this could work, see Manna by Marshall Brain. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Thanks! Purchased the Kindle version!
        pfisch 11y ago
        His "solution" at the end was some thinly veiled communism. His proposed economy didn't even make sense. There was nothing stopping people from accumulating wealth and basically taking over.
        wwweston 11y ago
        It's not clear that there is any other solution besides something you could call "thinly veiled communism." Either everybody gets some ownership or share in the productive capacity we're increasingly turning over to machines, or some people just get left out not because they're unwilling to contribute but because there's no labor market left.
        pfisch 11y ago
        I guess here is one of the big problems with these solutions. Post scarcity is not even a thing. There will always be finite amounts of different resources or creations. So even if we live in crazy robot utopia world people will be creating things that will still exist in finite amounts that they will trade for other objects that exist in finite amounts. In fact we really already do live in crazy robot utopia world and this is already happening. Almost no one is starving in america and millions of people live primarily on the dole. Those people living on the dole are living better than like 90% of the human race that has ever existed, they are just living relatively worse than the people who are employed or making a living. In project australia or whatever it sounded like there were easy ways to consolidate resources because people still owned things and could barter them and eventually they would have all the resources and the monthly credit allowance would once again be welfare. I'm not even really sure what is wrong with capitalism as a system because life is getting better for everyone over time, and as long as ownership/monopoly isn't taken to its extreme things continue to work out.
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      I don't see how they're mutually exclusive. Automation frees people from menial work into higher level jobs that can produce even more automation. What we currently have, though, is a poorly designed system which doesn't make this transition easy and doesn't reward actors properly. I'm talking about things like free training for programming and technical skills, conditional support for the unemployed so they can have time to re-train and re-insert in the job market (while maintaining their health and spending), and means to make income distribution little flatter (automation can concentrate income to a degree that gets counterproductive).
- CalRobert 11y ago
  "Giving someone work experience is progress for her." Is it, though? If you spent 8 hours a day pouring soda in to cups would that be progress? We have this absurd fetishization of "work" as though any task performed in exchanged for money is inherently virtuous. Imagine a world where that person is given their wage, but a robot does the job for them. Is that world any worse off?
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    > If you spent 8 hours a day pouring soda in to cups would that be progress? It's not exciting, but proving you can show up on time every day isn't nothing. There are plenty of great jobs that mostly involve being professional, congenial, and available. It's the work history equivalent of building a good credit rating.
    - brc 11y ago
      This is an important point. Just being punctual and efficient and not stealing is a bar many people can't clear because they didn't start in a low paid job and get experience.
PopsiclePete 11y ago
Automation is coming. We can't stop it. Together with Globalization and various "free" trade agreements, the US worker is ..effed. We are going to have the well-paying STEM jobs, the lawyers, bankers, doctors, therapists, the super low wage unskilled laborers in a race to the bottom, trying to compete with machines, and a huge, empty nothing in the middle between those groups. And that's going to happen sadly before we reach Star Trek utopia, and there will be large-scale civil unrest, even in the US, within the next 30 years, I'm betting on it. And let's not even talk about impoverished countries with exploding populations that are already struggling to provide jobs - an endless cycle of regional warfare, an endless Arab Spring.
- ryoshu 11y ago
  Doctors, bankers and lawyers are screwed as well. ML will make sure of that. We will still need some people to perform those functions, but not nearly as many as we have now.
  - georgemcbay 11y ago
    Yup, virtually everyone is screwed, eventually (with eventually being not that far away, IMO). Something that seems to get missed a bunch when talking about the upcoming lack of work for humans is that a job category doesn't need to be fully automated to cause widespread lack of employment. Simply automating a job enough to allow 2 people to do the work 3 used to do puts 33% of those doing that job out of work. 33% unemployment is already an economic nightmare and the actual ratios of "X people to do the work Y used to do" will quickly become much more severe than 2 to 3. Some people will inevitably say "this has happened before", but this time a lot of the automation is going to be purely software. You are not going to have enough new jobs for people "maintaining the robots" at anywhere near the scale required to make up for the lost jobs like you did with the previous more mechanical style of automation.
  - adebtlawyer 11y ago
    Show me an AI that can do these jobs, and I'll show you one that can do any job.
x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
You may not remember from the Star Trek universe, but there were multiple world wars and huge amounts of suffering between "today" and what we remember fondly from the Star Trek universe. There was no "happy path" to the society portrayed in Star Trek.
- webkike 11y ago
  Source: first Q episode from Next Generation
  - chc 11y ago
    The first Q episode was the first episode.
    - fapjacks 11y ago
      Encounter at Farpoint.
tsotha 11y ago
I'm not convinced we really want the Star Trek utopia. A great many people have a need to feel useful. Some fulfill it with family, others with work. You don't have to look very far to find neighborhoods where people have enough food and medical care but don't have anything to do. These are not nice neighborhoods.
- ndarilek 11y ago
  They aren't unnice neighborhoods because those living there have nothing to do. They're unnice neighborhoods because, while many of those living there do all they can, it isn't enough to make their lives worth living. So those who can't make their lives worth living make those who can have worse lives. Disclaimer: I live in one of these neighborhoods. While I, personally, think we're closer to a post-scarcity society than we realize, I'm still surrounded by those who lack the privilege to think about such things. As such, they're kept awake at 2 AM because their neighbor is having a physiological reaction to whatever drugs he took that day and is storming around his complex, screaming and destroying things. Meanwhile, I'm a straight white male privileged enough to be living in a co-op, where we maintain a better standard of living and don't worry about such things on our property (at least, to some extent.)
  - tsotha 11y ago
    Not completely, no, but I think that's a big part of it. You can't have respect for yourself if you're mooching off other people.
    - ndarilek 11y ago
      Maybe, but I'm a lot more concerned with tax-dodging American companies incorporating in Ireland and skipping out on millions, than I am about safety nets that help people to get by. I don't think that unhappy neighborhoods are caused by people sitting around feeling terrible about mooching. Put another way, I hear a lot more people trying to figure out how to pay their bills, than I do people feeling bad that they need help to do so.
apatters 11y ago
How about people be allowed to choose for themselves what they do? I know plenty of people who would prefer to do repetitive, unfulfilling tasks and get paid for them versus sitting around broke and waiting for utopia to arrive.

humanrebar 11y ago

> what you're talking about sounds like halting progress Depends on what you mean by progress. Giving someone work experience is progress for her. I'm not talking about halting progress. I'm talking dividing the employment and subsistence problems. There will still be demand for automation. It just won't be artificially inflated by making employment more expensive than it has to be.

ahallock 11y ago
So artificially increasing the demand for automation is bad, but incentivizing people to have more children and artificially increasing the population is good? > Giving someone work experience is progress for her. Progress is getting to the point where people can have technology provide the essentials, so that these repetitive jobs are just for fun, rather than a means for survival. It's like in DS9 where Sisko's father runs a restaurant--for pleasure. If he'd been sick or no longer interested in working, he wouldn't have to worry about starving or finding a place to live.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Do you want employment and consumer spending or do you want automation and progress? They're mostly mutually exclusive, and we'll have to face up to that fact.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I want automation and technology to fuel progress, and provide for people so they can "spend" without the need for employment. "Our infrastructure provides you with X to spend every time period. Spend on what you'd like. Earn more if you'd like with a job/tasks/work of your choosing."
    - filoeleven 11y ago
      For an illustration of how this could work, see Manna by Marshall Brain. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Thanks! Purchased the Kindle version!
      - pfisch 11y ago
        His "solution" at the end was some thinly veiled communism. His proposed economy didn't even make sense. There was nothing stopping people from accumulating wealth and basically taking over.
        wwweston 11y ago
        It's not clear that there is any other solution besides something you could call "thinly veiled communism." Either everybody gets some ownership or share in the productive capacity we're increasingly turning over to machines, or some people just get left out not because they're unwilling to contribute but because there's no labor market left.
        pfisch 11y ago
        I guess here is one of the big problems with these solutions. Post scarcity is not even a thing. There will always be finite amounts of different resources or creations. So even if we live in crazy robot utopia world people will be creating things that will still exist in finite amounts that they will trade for other objects that exist in finite amounts. In fact we really already do live in crazy robot utopia world and this is already happening. Almost no one is starving in america and millions of people live primarily on the dole. Those people living on the dole are living better than like 90% of the human race that has ever existed, they are just living relatively worse than the people who are employed or making a living. In project australia or whatever it sounded like there were easy ways to consolidate resources because people still owned things and could barter them and eventually they would have all the resources and the monthly credit allowance would once again be welfare. I'm not even really sure what is wrong with capitalism as a system because life is getting better for everyone over time, and as long as ownership/monopoly isn't taken to its extreme things continue to work out.
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    I don't see how they're mutually exclusive. Automation frees people from menial work into higher level jobs that can produce even more automation. What we currently have, though, is a poorly designed system which doesn't make this transition easy and doesn't reward actors properly. I'm talking about things like free training for programming and technical skills, conditional support for the unemployed so they can have time to re-train and re-insert in the job market (while maintaining their health and spending), and means to make income distribution little flatter (automation can concentrate income to a degree that gets counterproductive).
CalRobert 11y ago
"Giving someone work experience is progress for her." Is it, though? If you spent 8 hours a day pouring soda in to cups would that be progress? We have this absurd fetishization of "work" as though any task performed in exchanged for money is inherently virtuous. Imagine a world where that person is given their wage, but a robot does the job for them. Is that world any worse off?
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > If you spent 8 hours a day pouring soda in to cups would that be progress? It's not exciting, but proving you can show up on time every day isn't nothing. There are plenty of great jobs that mostly involve being professional, congenial, and available. It's the work history equivalent of building a good credit rating.
  - brc 11y ago
    This is an important point. Just being punctual and efficient and not stealing is a bar many people can't clear because they didn't start in a low paid job and get experience.

PopsiclePete 11y ago

Automation is coming. We can't stop it. Together with Globalization and various "free" trade agreements, the US worker is ..effed. We are going to have the well-paying STEM jobs, the lawyers, bankers, doctors, therapists, the super low wage unskilled laborers in a race to the bottom, trying to compete with machines, and a huge, empty nothing in the middle between those groups. And that's going to happen sadly before we reach Star Trek utopia, and there will be large-scale civil unrest, even in the US, within the next 30 years, I'm betting on it. And let's not even talk about impoverished countries with exploding populations that are already struggling to provide jobs - an endless cycle of regional warfare, an endless Arab Spring.

ryoshu 11y ago
Doctors, bankers and lawyers are screwed as well. ML will make sure of that. We will still need some people to perform those functions, but not nearly as many as we have now.
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  Yup, virtually everyone is screwed, eventually (with eventually being not that far away, IMO). Something that seems to get missed a bunch when talking about the upcoming lack of work for humans is that a job category doesn't need to be fully automated to cause widespread lack of employment. Simply automating a job enough to allow 2 people to do the work 3 used to do puts 33% of those doing that job out of work. 33% unemployment is already an economic nightmare and the actual ratios of "X people to do the work Y used to do" will quickly become much more severe than 2 to 3. Some people will inevitably say "this has happened before", but this time a lot of the automation is going to be purely software. You are not going to have enough new jobs for people "maintaining the robots" at anywhere near the scale required to make up for the lost jobs like you did with the previous more mechanical style of automation.
- adebtlawyer 11y ago
  Show me an AI that can do these jobs, and I'll show you one that can do any job.

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago

You may not remember from the Star Trek universe, but there were multiple world wars and huge amounts of suffering between "today" and what we remember fondly from the Star Trek universe. There was no "happy path" to the society portrayed in Star Trek.

webkike 11y ago
Source: first Q episode from Next Generation
- chc 11y ago
  The first Q episode was the first episode.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Encounter at Farpoint.

tsotha 11y ago

I'm not convinced we really want the Star Trek utopia. A great many people have a need to feel useful. Some fulfill it with family, others with work. You don't have to look very far to find neighborhoods where people have enough food and medical care but don't have anything to do. These are not nice neighborhoods.

ndarilek 11y ago
They aren't unnice neighborhoods because those living there have nothing to do. They're unnice neighborhoods because, while many of those living there do all they can, it isn't enough to make their lives worth living. So those who can't make their lives worth living make those who can have worse lives. Disclaimer: I live in one of these neighborhoods. While I, personally, think we're closer to a post-scarcity society than we realize, I'm still surrounded by those who lack the privilege to think about such things. As such, they're kept awake at 2 AM because their neighbor is having a physiological reaction to whatever drugs he took that day and is storming around his complex, screaming and destroying things. Meanwhile, I'm a straight white male privileged enough to be living in a co-op, where we maintain a better standard of living and don't worry about such things on our property (at least, to some extent.)
- tsotha 11y ago
  Not completely, no, but I think that's a big part of it. You can't have respect for yourself if you're mooching off other people.
  - ndarilek 11y ago
    Maybe, but I'm a lot more concerned with tax-dodging American companies incorporating in Ireland and skipping out on millions, than I am about safety nets that help people to get by. I don't think that unhappy neighborhoods are caused by people sitting around feeling terrible about mooching. Put another way, I hear a lot more people trying to figure out how to pay their bills, than I do people feeling bad that they need help to do so.

apatters 11y ago

How about people be allowed to choose for themselves what they do? I know plenty of people who would prefer to do repetitive, unfulfilling tasks and get paid for them versus sitting around broke and waiting for utopia to arrive.