This is the main question of the future
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| Author | Content |
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| jdixon Feb 20, 2017 2:05 PM EDT |
And I only wish I had a good answer. :( It may actually come to outlawing automation in certain fields, for the greater good of society. |
| seatex Feb 20, 2017 2:20 PM EDT |
This brings back memories from about 20 years ago when every office was going to go paperless. There are so many sure-thing changes hitting us in the present day, yet it remains to be seen if the reality delivers on the promise. So far, self-driving cars are still crashing, everything connected to the internet is still considered less than safe, and software patches still come weekly or monthly. Maybe we should focus on fixing our current technologies, before we start dreaming of automating ourselves out of jobs. |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 20, 2017 3:50 PM EDT |
well, for one, bill gates thinks that robots should be taxed: https://twitter.com/qz/status/832665942735753216 that aside, i do believe there is plenty of other work that still needs to be done. education for example. while teaching knowledge can be automated too, education is much more than that. moral or spiritual education. to teach right from wrong, anything that has to do with philosophy, creativity, and other soft skills will never be successfully automated. we will need good human teachers for that for time to come. imagine for a moment that we not only automate most work, but also eliminate the need to spend money for defense and other areas where money currently is being wasted. and instead put all that money into education and research. how many new jobs we could create ... and imagine all that research we could be doing ... what we could learn ... mars and beyond! cure cancer and aids! all of these things require well educated people. (which brings us back to education. we just can't have enough education!) greetings, eMBee. |
| jdixon Feb 20, 2017 4:29 PM EDT |
> ...but also eliminate the need to spend money for defense ... Would require a massive change in human nature, which hasn't shown any signs of being possible in our roughly 7000 years of recorded history. :( And yes, seatex, his concerns are currently overstated, but the trends are clear. He may be wrong about how fast it will happen, but the potential is obvious |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 21, 2017 3:16 AM EDT |
yes, it would. i am confident that it will happen, again, this requires education, lot's of education. but for now, what i am saying is that automation is not our enemy. spending resources on the wrong things is. greetings, eMBee. |
| dotmatrix Feb 21, 2017 10:52 AM EDT |
Contrarian viewpoint, as always... "Everything" will not be automated at any point in the near future. The Uber and auto-driving car future is not likely to occur either. On cars and car ownership: Auto driving and non-car ownership will only function in very urban areas. Much of the Earth is not urban, so there will always be a need for vehicles and vehicle ownership. Therefore, cars will always be made until such time as "Beam me up Scotty" works. One could argue that cars in urban areas already don't make sense. Cities have lots of cars... but cities with sensible mass transportation systems make much more sense than self-driving city vehicles. I lived in Brooklyn for a while, never once took a cab... subway runs most places. The self-driving Uber controlled world is simply not going to happen. And certainly not going to eliminate the need for vehicles and vehicle ownership. One area of auto-driving that may occur is long-haul trucking. The local delivery services are unlikely to be automated unless via UAV. On the article's position on Cloud-everything corp: The Cloud is not a safe place. Data are lost and stolen. Accounts are compromised. Malware is ever present... The Cloud is a good upper management solution because it is cheap and requires less work upfront. However, as I've posted previously, it's a dangerous game to play... and many companies have already lost their shirts. Of course, there's the saying about omelets and eggs... but The Cloud provides a near infinite number of eggs among a few omelets. On automation putting people out of work: The horseless carriage put an awful lot of blacksmiths out of business. |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 22, 2017 7:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:Auto driving and non-car ownership will only function in very urban areas i agree with the non-car-ownership but why would self-driving cars not work anywhere? Quoting:cities with sensible mass transportation systems make much more sense than self-driving city vehicles indeed. non-owned self-driving cars however do make sense to cover the last mile. going from home to the subway station. self-driving cars don't have any impact on jobs with respect to personal car ownership. they may take away jobs of taxi and uber drivers, but those are a minority of all possible self-driving cars. (truck drivers will be affected too. in fact, i believe they are to go first, because a self-driving truck can run 24 hours without stopping. huge benefits to be had from that) so self-driving cars and automation of jobs are two related but separate issues. it is perfectly conceivable (and i believe very realistic) that people in the future will own self-driving cars and use them like cars today. and those won't replace any jobs. greetings, eMBee. |
| skelband Feb 22, 2017 2:01 PM EDT |
I think automation of everything that can be automated is pretty inevitable given the current economic model of our society. This is going to accelerate at a remarkable and disconcerting rate. Automation offers the least costs and the maximum reliability. Why would any company not avail itself of that technology for any area where it can be achieved? Of course, this introduces the problem of destroying your own customers. If no-one is employed, then who can buy the goods? That's why we are going to see a radical shift in the way our society works, and it won't come without bloody revolution. I see the extrapolation of the status quo resulting in ever more massive rifts between the rich and the poor, since work will become increasingly more difficult to find and that massive driver of wealth redistribution, employment, disappearing. The current hiatus in automation of certain fields for which only people can yet do will disappear as AI becomes more prevalent. That awful product of cattle employment, the "call centre" will disappear as automated systems are able to deal with more than just "menu" tasks. Once self-driving cars are accepted and a legal framework is ratified; taxi/bus/train drivers along with Uber/Lyft drivers will disappear almost over night, like the DVD rental shops did: they will be safer and just make economic sense. The bureaucracy of Government will grow exponentially, because it always does. Corporate driven legislation will continue to grow as multi-nationals struggle to figure out how they can survive without willing customers able to pay the money that they need to sustain themselves despite their costs dropping through the floor. Eventually however, the whole system will collapse under its own economic weight. And it will be beautiful to behold. And we will see this within 20 years, probably much sooner. |
| skelband Feb 22, 2017 2:10 PM EDT |
My reply above was off the top of my head. I just read the article afterwards, and I think the guy has it mostly spot on. At least that is how it should pan out. Universal basic income is probably one of the ways to go. However, it will have a massive knock-on effect. A huge number of people only do the work that they do because they have to to survive. If I had enough to "retire" on (for food, accommodation) I would be out of here like a shot. Life is short and there is so much worthwhile stuff to do. Large swathes of economic activity will become redundant. Pension funds would become largely irrelevant. Much of what government does now will become irrelevent. Many economic crimes would become pointless, although of course some would remain. I just hope that I'm around long enough to see how things transpire. |
| jdixon Feb 22, 2017 2:51 PM EDT |
> That awful product of cattle employment, the "call centre" will disappear as automated systems are able to deal with more than just "menu" tasks. I doubt I'm the only one who starts hitting 0 as soon as I hear one of those automated systems and keeps hitting it until they system passes me to a live person. :) From what I've seen, people prefer dealing with other people if they can reasonable afford to do so. It's the reasonably afford that's the rub. |
| skelband Feb 22, 2017 3:14 PM EDT |
> From what I've seen, people prefer dealing with other people if they can reasonable afford to do so. It's the reasonably afford that's the rub. My hope is that after the revolution, the need for call centres will largely disappear. No health insurance, minimal government bureaucracy, no car insurance, etc, etc no need for call centres. Might be a bit of a pipe dream though. |
| seatex Feb 22, 2017 5:55 PM EDT |
The American way is to only acknowledge problems AFTER they occur. No spoilers! 90% of people DON'T want to know what future holds... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4248960/Most-... |
| dotmatrix Feb 22, 2017 8:13 PM EDT |
What will humans do when machines take over? That's easy: Make moonshine. ************** Until "AI" gains consciousness, humans will have employment opportunities. After 'full automation,' the 'work' will likely be something that has not been envisioned yet. |
| seatex Feb 22, 2017 8:38 PM EDT |
> "Until "AI" gains consciousness..." Then, your boss will be a bot. |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 23, 2017 7:24 AM EDT |
Quoting:The bureaucracy of Government will grow exponentiallythat's it. we'll all be either working for the government, or for companies to deal with the bureaucratic hurdles. greetings, eMBee. |
| jdixon Feb 23, 2017 8:05 AM EDT |
> ..that's it. we'll all be either working for the government... It seems to me it would be far easier to program an AI to deal with and implement the endless rules of a bureaucracy than most other jobs. So it's just as likely that all the government jobs will get automated. |
| dotmatrix Feb 23, 2017 9:35 AM EDT |
>program an AI to deal with and implement the endless rules of a bureaucracy This is called Turbo Tax. I used to hand calculate all my tax form info... now it's too complex to figure out. The Government and local governments should be required to provide citizens with zero payment to use computerized tax filing... of course FOSS-ware. As far as the endless and exponentially expanding government goes... this is where it's heading: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/synopsis Cube Synopsis wrote:After some time, Quentin tricks Worth into revealing that he is one of the architects who designed the enormous cube-shaped shell which contains the cube-shaped rooms. When asked about who contracted him to do the job, he states that he doesn't know. |
| jdixon Feb 23, 2017 9:47 AM EDT |
> As far as the endless and exponentially expanding government goes... this is where it's heading: We need to implement Frank Herbert's BuSab: https://infogalactic.com/info/Bureau_of_Sabotage |
| skelband Feb 23, 2017 1:23 PM EDT |
> It seems to me it would be far easier to program an AI to deal with and implement the endless rules of a bureaucracy than most other jobs. The end game of course is the abandonment of money. Without money, the vast majority of what government does now would become superfluous. The remainder would be just about the efficient dispersal of resources which is something that could be done now anyway and is hardly a task requiring sophisticated AI, and the administration of law enforcement and since most law is about property and crimes related to poverty it would become a rather minor task. |
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