Link: Interesting Video About Automation and the Singularity
I finally got into Ello (I was mad that I couldn’t get an invitation for the longest time). I found this interesting video about automation and what we should do when most jobs no longer require humans. I have often wondered what we were going to do with the millions of unemployed people when machines create untold abundance. What will we need human workers to do? I have thought that there will be certain areas where we will want to interact with people. I think bots and other machines will be more assistants rather than fully taking over tasks in a few areas. I think it will be more balanced but that does not solve the problem of millions of unemployed undermining the economy and the wealth of nations. Do we save the jobs? Do we stop automation? Is this the natural course of history? Should we all be prepared to be destitute? Should we consider minimum income proposals more closely?
The video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&feature=youtu.be
I found it on this interesting post. He projects a much more dystopian view of the Singularity and how it will affect humanity. I think his post is not mindful of Bostrom’s work which I am plowing through but it might provide some discussion fodder.
The post is here:
https://ello.co/scottdakota/post/ofb9vzDer9NoiQvwdueyAg
It is several months old actually. But yeah, I agree with the premise. There are massive changes coming to the workforce and people are not aware of it. This video should be played at every high school graduation ceremony so kids can get familiar with future that’s coming soon.
I’m actually quite worried about AI influence in my area of work (web design/development). There is common misconception that IT jobs will flourish in machine age, but it’s the opposite. Average IT jobs will be the first to go.
Pretty much.
A friend and I were talking about this the other day, in response to this same video. The big problem we saw with government-supplied basic income, is there’s a single point of failure—if the government becomes too corrupt, you’re out of luck.
An alternative option would be enforcing a norm of companies being very transparent with their finances, and tithing part of their profits to the general public. That system would probably be really hard to establish, but seems like it might be more sustainable; people have a lot of time on their hands that could be put toward keeping tabs on companies, and if one steps too far out of line, everyone boycotts it. This would probably also require punishing non-punishers—if a company that sells its’ products to other companies steps out of line, people would have to boycott that company’s customers, too. Some companies would be harder than others to retaliate against, though—especially utility companies and monopolies.
This entire post is mostly stuff I thought of or heard of yesterday; I have no idea if it’s actually feasible, and likely it’s not. But I’d like to hear the reasons why not.
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Who is the unnamed actor who does this enforcing, establishing, and requiring? A government? See first extract. Everyone? How do they come to all agree? A published standard? Who draws it up? The people with the most time on their hands?
How far does the contagion spread? Would there be a certain ratio of taint, perhaps equal to one for the primary offender, one-half for those failing to shun them, one-quarter for those failing to shun the non-shunners, and so on? Does this only apply to large companies, or to companies of all sizes? The self-employed? Everyone?
What stabilises the value of this fiat currency of opprobrium?
Ideally everyone, but probably with some opinion leaders and media outlets being the ones to spread the news about norm violations.
I’d assumed it’d be a full boycott rather than a boycott in ratios. A half-boycott seems likely to fail for the same reasons that trying to “eat less meat” doesn’t work well for humans. I’m not sure how many degrees of separation that would apply to, or even if it needs to be a specific number—in practice, I don’t think anyone wants to bother following the “who bought from who” trails indefinitely. Two or three would probably be enough, though—it just has to be enough to make public pressure for boycotts against B2B products feasible.
Standards of transparency might need some kind of formal system. I don’t know what exactly, but that’s not really the hard part of the problem anyway. I was picturing the definition of what counts as an offence working more like cultural norms than a specific standard, though. Which people wouldn’t always agree on—if a meat-growing company starts selling “traditionally farmed” factory farm chicken in addition to its’ grown chicken, maybe half the population thinks that’s bad and starts buying their grown chicken elsewhere, the other half thinks it’s fine and keeps doing business with the company, and the company can decide whether having a traditional meats product line is worth loosing half its’ other business. Though, the problem with that is that it’d breed companies that specialize in doing business with niches that don’t care much about morals, or have very different morals. I’m not sure what to do about that yet, or how big a problem it would be.
There’d need to be some schelling point for company size that allows smaller, younger companies to get started without being so vulnerable to the public. I don’t know exactly what that schelling point would be. (Under the current system, having it start at a number of employees, dollar amount of profit, or the owners’ degree of insulation from personal liability (sole proprietorship vs. LLC vs. publicly traded) would all be possibilities. But I can’t say for sure what it should be in this hypothetical future society, because laws and enforcement of laws and balances of power will have changed a lot.
I’m not sure what this means. Can you explain?
In general terms, your proposal is for everyone to act the way you think they should, and then society’s problems will be solved. It is literally by fiat: you say “let it be”, and imagine it working. But unless there are internal reasons why the whole thing would work, reasons for each individual following what they judge to be their own interest, then it isn’t a mechanism, any more than a picture of a clock is a clock. A cultural norm is never sustained merely by the fact of being a cultural norm.
How do you create a cultural norm anyway? Look at the world—worldwide, there’s no global cultural norm, despite the strenuous efforts of religions and expansionist states throughout history.
I tend to agree I don’t think this system is very good. I think the transition is going to be outrageous.
If a government with the monopoly of violence get’s really corrupt you are screwed no matter what.
My problem is that what are we going to do when there is nothing for humans to do? Where will there be meaningful work? I think we have to think even beyond money to sheer fulfillment.
I’m not convinced that people need meaningful work—for a long time, wealthy people seem to have been content to live for the fun of it. I think we’re trained to think we need meaningful work.
It’s more plausible that people need to think they make a difference to other people, but that’s a matter of social and intimate relationships.
I agree. I also think that we might see what we can do to build solid communities where sharing, experiences, ritual, and life are a major driving force. In other words, the way things were not too long ago. Indigenous cultures could be helpful in reminding us how to live in this manner.
Art and relationships (including family and friendships) are the two big places left for fulfillment, that I see. Culture and/or institutions (town governments, media, companies, etc) would have to actively encourage people to do active, constructive things, though, I think—the failure mode where you do nothing but watch TV and play video games all day is probably even easier to fall into in a society where material comfort is easy to get and leaving the house is usually unnecessary. Rewarding people with recognition when they do things that are good for them seems like one way—frequent local contests for things like art, music and cooking so people can get social fulfillment from hobbies more easily.
Which isn’t to say it won’t be a problem—just that there’s stuff people can do about it.
I could see religion/spirituality also being a major driver. I could also see an cottage industry of human-made items cropping up as a source of revenue and also of purpose. I guess the big threat is corporations who use this, how we will make sure that things are cheap enough for people to actually afford to do anything?
I hadn’t thought of religion, but that makes a lot of sense. I could also see homemade gifts being really popular—making something specifically for someone is about more than the thing itself, so it isn’t so easily replaceable. I’d also be interested to see what happens when people have so much time and energy to devote to their relationships, with things like that.
Hm.. I’m not really sure how price incentives would work in this context. Avoiding monopolies would definitely be important. If we assume that problem is solved, would competing on price be enough? It’s a really weird sort of economics, when most of the customers’ income comes from a corporate tithe… I’m too tired for math at the moment, might take a look at it later.